Using SQLite

Build and Installation Options

There are several different ways to build, integrate, and install SQLite. The design of the SQLite core lends itself to being compiled as a dynamic library. A single library can then be utilized by whatever application requires SQLite.

Building a shared library this way is one of the more straightforward ways to integrate and install SQLite, but it is often not the best approach. The SQLite project releases new versions rather frequently. While they take backward compatibility seriously, there are sometimes changes to the default configuration. There are also cases of applications becoming dependent on version-specific bugs or undefined (or undocumented) behaviors. There are also a large number of custom build options that SQLite supports. All these concerns can be difficult to create a system-wide build that is suitable for every application that uses SQLite.

This problem becomes worse as the number of applications utilizing SQLite continues to increase, making for more and more application-specific copies of SQLite. Even if an application (or suite of applications) has its own private copy of an SQLite library, there is still the possibility of incorrect linking and version incompatibilities.

To avoid these problems, the recommended way of using SQLite is to integrate the whole database engine directly into your application. This can be done by building a static library and then linking it in, or by simply building the amalgamation source directly into ...