other objects as keys or to store other kinds of objects the user must
serialize them somehow, typically using marshal.dumps or pickle.dumps.
-The \module{bsddb} module is only available on \UNIX{} systems, so it
-is not built by default in the standard Python distribution. Also,
-there are two incompatible versions of the underlying library.
+There are two incompatible versions of the underlying library.
Version 1.85 is widely available, but has some known bugs. Version 2
is not quite as widely used, but does offer some improvements. The
-\module{bsddb} module uses the 1.85 interface. Users wishing to use
-version 2 of the Berkeley DB library will have to modify the source
-for the module to include \file{db_185.h} instead of
-\file{db.h} (\file{db_185.h} contains the version 1.85 compatibility
-interface).
+\module{bsddb} module uses the 1.85 interface. Starting with Python
+2.0, the \program{configure} script can usually determine the
+version of the library which is available and build it correctly. If
+you have difficulty getting \program{configure} to do the right thing,
+run it with the \longprogramopt{help} option to get information about
+additional options that can help. On Windows, you will need to define
+the \code{HAVE_DB_185_H} macro if you are building Python from source
+and using version 2 of the DB library.
The \module{bsddb} module defines the following functions that create
objects that access the appropriate type of Berkeley DB file. The