Investigate level-js status

[dignifiedquire]

The current master of https://github.com/maxogden/level.js is not up to date with the rest of the level eco system. Currently we are depending on https://github.com/timkuijsten/level.js/tree/idbunwrapper which is near complete rewrite supporting use cases like empty values for us.

We should try and see in Level/level-js#46 what it takes to finish this and get it released or start maintaining our own version.

[daviddias]

@pgte you are very close to the Level ecosystem. Any comment here?

[pgte]

I'm less familiar with the level-js than the node side of it..
Anyway, I've been implementing a level down store myself, and the abstract level down test suite is impressive, so maintaining such a thing is not something to be taken light-heartedly, specially if this is touching the (de)serialising / (de)encoding parts.. :)
Which leads me to asking:
What problem are we trying to prevent / solve here?

[dignifiedquire]

The issue is that the original level.js is not usable for us which is why we are currently using a fork, which brings with it all the issues of depending on a fork which is not maintained nor officially released.

Main issues with level.js master were the iterators not being usable as far as I remember and some other thing that are fixed in the fork

[daviddias]

@dignifiedquire is there a PR to the main one?

[dignifiedquire]

@diasdavid no just this comment:Level/level-js#46 (comment)

[ralphtheninja]

@dignifiedquire o/ I have begun working on this.

[ralphtheninja]

Quick and dirty roadmap:

• move level.js to level org, me, @juliangruber and @vweevers are active there now, I have asked @maxogden to move it and he's cool with it
• spend some time on fixing most obvious problems to get it up to par with abstract-leveldown
• replace the idb-wrapper
• get snapshots working
• other issues/unknown problems?

I haven't looked at the fork just yet, just focusing on the big brush for now :)

[dignifiedquire]

@ralphtheninja great to hear, the fork works very well and is also a good deal faster than the official version if I remember correctly. I also think the other reason to use the fork were issues with the iterators, but I don't remember the details atm.

[juliangruber]

I'm happy with what @ralphtheninja suggests!