[gburd]

README for the v2026.10.8 release. The changes:

• "Measured against Berkeley DB 5.3.28": v2026.10.8 ÷ 5.3.28 on one c6id.metal, for 11 key/value rows plus TPC-C-like and TPC-B-like. It says what is faster, what is about the same and what is still slower, and why. The source is the test/bench/XREL-2026-10.md addendum (bench: Berkeley DB 5.3.28 vs LTS 2026.10.7.1 vs master, every access method #227).
• "What the fork has changed since 5.3.28": concurrency and performance, correctness and isolation, new features, portability, and release discipline. Each claim is taken from a release note or the qualification matrix.
• Contributing:
  • how to report a bug, and what to include;
  • the private security route;
  • the PR steps;
  • what a performance claim needs;
  • where fixes land (master first, backport-lts for the LTS line).
• RFCs: a "do I need one?" list.
• The release table lists v2026.10.8 as the current regular release.
• test/KNOWN-ISSUES.md gains I1: configure cannot guess the build type on Linux aarch64, because config.guess dates from 2011. It is present since v5.3.28, and the row gives the workaround.

Docs only.

[github-actions]

Coccinelle convention checks

No new violations. ✅

Resolved since baseline (3) -- update dist/cocci/baseline.txt to lock these in.

rule_mutex_unbalanced|MUTEX_UNBALANCED|src/btree/bt_curadj.c|return (ret);
rule_mutex_unbalanced|MUTEX_UNBALANCED|src/crypto/mersenne/mt19937db.c|return (ret);
rule_mutex_unbalanced|MUTEX_UNBALANCED|src/mp/mp_register.c|return (ret);

[github-actions]

ABI diff vs v2026.10.8 (libabigail — authoritative)

abidiff exit bitmask: 0

Removed exported symbols (nm -D, _NNNN version suffix normalized)

None.

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Advisory: libabigail/nm is the authoritative binary-ABI check; Coccinelle is complementary source-level early warning. See dist/cocci/README.md.