That one got me as well - some pretty wild stuff about prompting the compiler, starship on the moon, and then there's SQLite 4.0

You can criticize it for many things but it seems to have comedic timing nailed.

I wouldn't be surprised if it went towards the LaTeX model instead where there's essentially never another major version release. There's only so much functionality you need in a local only database engine I bet they're getting close to complete.

I'd love to see more ALTER TABLE functionality, and maybe MERGE, and definitely better JSON validation. None of that warrants a version bump, though.

You know what I'd really like, that would justify a version bump? CRDT. Automatically syncing local changes to a remote service, so e.g. an Android app could store data locally on SQLite, but also log into a web site on his desktop and all the data is right there. The remote service need not be SQLite - in fact I'd prefer postgres. The service would also have to merge databases from all users into a single database... Or should I actually use postgres for authorisation but open each users' data in a replicated SQLite file? This is such a common issue, I'm surprised there isn't a canonical solution yet.

I think the unified syncing while neat is way beyond what SQLite is really meant for and you'd get into so many niche situations dealing with out of sync master and slave 'databases' it's hard to make an automated solution that covers them effectively unless you force the schema into a transactional design for everything just to sort out update conflicts. eg: Your user has the app on two devices uses one while it doesn't have an internet connection altering the state and then uses the app on another device before the original has a chance to sync.

Yes, it's a difficult problem. That's why I'd like it to be wrapped in a nice package away from my application logic.

Even a product that does this behind the scenes, by wrapping SQLite and exposing SQLite's wrapped interface, would be great. I'd pay for that.

If it had been about GIMP I would have laughed harder.

Be reasonable. It's only looking forward a single decade.

The promise is backwards compatibility in the file format and C API until 2050.

https://sqlite.org/lts.html