"Jonah H. Harris" <jonah.harris@gmail.com> writes:
> On 7/13/06, Marc G. Fournier <scrappy@postgresql.org> wrote:
>> Why?
> Because, the fact is that it's a PITA and many people don't even go
> far enough to look. If major components of PostgreSQL were included
> in the core, it would make it much easier for people; especially those
> familiar with commercial-class database systems.
No, the correct way to say that is "if major components were included in
the readily-available distributions of Postgres" then newbies would find
it easier to find them. That doesn't lead to concluding that we should
redefine "core" as "everything that's popular". These days I don't
believe that many newbies download and compile the core PG source
distribution --- newbies are using the Windows installer or pre-packaged
Linux distributions, and so the right answer is to make sure that those
packagers provide all the important add-ons nearby to the core packages.
For those who are actually downloading stuff directly from
http://www.postgresql.org/download/, that page already does list most
of the add-ons that have been mentioned in this thread. Perhaps we need
to adjust the wording to make it clearer that you probably want some of
them. One really trivial change is that the second sentence says "full
package" where it ought to say "core package" --- we should consistently
reinforce the idea that you're getting a database core, not everything
that you might want to go with it.
regards, tom lane