Comment 21 for bug 571286

Forgot to talk about 3rd party apps, so here it is.

First of all, we don't know what 3rd party apps are using it, so not sure if there are any at all. Then, we haven't yet agreed on API/on-disk format stability yet for this contacts database, it's still an unstable API/specification, so there is not API/on-disk format stability assurance for this that 3rd party apps can rely on. If a 3rd party app uses this, it already knows (or should know) that this is unstable and can change.

Also, let me explain why we need, not only for this change but for other on-disk format changes we are going to do, the karmic/lucid packages to be upgraded. Whenever we deploy some change on the server, users in those distros will get the new database format automatically on their next synchronization between U1's couchdb and their local couchdb. So, if we are not allowed to do on-disk format changes, this means we need to freeze the format used in Karmic for years and not improve / evolve it at all. Provided, as mentioned above, this is an unstable API/spec, that would mean having to commit to a work-in-progress for years. So this is not about changing on-disk format for an old distro, it is about making it support stuff that they will be getting from the server, which is not tied to any distro, for the next few years.