Install tokyo-cabinet with Homebrew

Project links

• Homepage
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• tcamgr
• tcamttest
• tcatest
• tcbmgr
• tcbmttest
• tcbtest
• tcfmgr
• tcfmttest
• tcftest
• tchmgr
• tchmttest
• tchtest
• tctmgr
• tctmttest
• tcttest
• tcucodec
• tcumttest
• tcutest

Project history

The project page carries a 2006-2011 FAL Labs copyright notice and the fundamental specification carries a 2006-2010 notice, with the public page last updated on 2010-08-05. The official overview says Tokyo Cabinet was written and maintained by FAL Labs and developed to improve space efficiency, time efficiency, multithreaded parallelism, usability, robustness, and 64-bit support over earlier DBM products.

The specification is unusually explicit about Tokyo Cabinet's DBM lineage: it compares the API to UNIX DBM/NDBM/GDBM access methods, says Tokyo Cabinet is an alternative for DBM because of higher performance, and lists restrictions of traditional DBM and QDBM that Tokyo Cabinet removed. That makes it part of the classic Unix embedded-database family rather than the later networked NoSQL-server lineage.

Adoption history

Official documentation says Tokyo Cabinet shipped C, Perl, Ruby, Java, and Lua APIs, ran on C99/POSIX platforms, and provided source packages while directing binary-package users to distributors. The Homebrew formula reflects that distributor adoption: package managers kept it available for developers who needed the library and its command-line inspection/test tools long after the upstream page had become mostly archival.

How it is used

The documented install flow is the standard source-package sequence: `./configure`, `make`, `make check`, and `make install`. The installed payload includes headers, `libtokyocabinet`, pkg-config metadata, many `tc*` command-line programs, man pages, and API docs; the specification says those command-line interfaces are useful for prototyping, testing, and debugging.

In practical package-manager use, Tokyo Cabinet is the sort of dependency installed because another program wants a compact embedded key/value store, or because a developer wants direct access to `tchmgr`, `tcbmgr`, `tctmgr`, and related tools for inspecting hash, B+ tree, fixed, table, and abstract database files.

Why package nerds care

Tokyo Cabinet matters to package nerds because it sits at the intersection of old Unix DBM culture and the late-2000s key/value-store boom: tiny C library, source tarballs, pkg-config file, language bindings, and many CLI utilities. It also spawned or sat beside a recognizable Tokyo/FAL Labs ecosystem, including Tokyo Tyrant for remote service, Tokyo Dystopia for full-text search, Tokyo Promenade, Kyoto Cabinet, and later Tkrzw.

Timeline

• 2006: Official copyright range begins for Tokyo Cabinet.
• 2010: Official pages last updated and latest source package listed as 1.4.48.
• 2011: Official project page copyright range ends.
• Current: Upstream page recommends Tkrzw as a more powerful and convenient successor.

Related projects

• The official page names Tokyo Tyrant, Tokyo Dystopia, Tokyo Promenade, and Kyoto Cabinet as sibling projects, and recommends Tkrzw as a later successor. The specification also frames Tokyo Cabinet as a successor to GDBM and QDBM.

Sources

• https://dbmx.net/tokyocabinet
• https://dbmx.net/tokyocabinet/spex-en.html
• source_facts.executables
• source_facts.package-manager