On Mon, Jan 30, 2006 at 04:35:15PM -0500, Mark Woodward wrote:
> It gets so frustrating sometimes, it isn't so black and white, there are
> many levels of gray. The PostgreSQL project is trying so hard to be
> neutral, that it is making itself irrelevant.
>
> Designing and including features that a large group of users would like to
> have makes sense. Regardless of my extension, I'd love to see PostgreSQL
> get a little pro-active in positioning itself better.
Firstly, there's a reason why some of the projects were included before
and have since been removed: Including stuff that depends on PHP in
PosstgreSQL causes build dependancy loops. You have to have PHP
installed to compile PostgreSQL and you need to have PostgreSQL
installed to compile PHP. The only way to solve it is to not mix things
like that. Not to mention that your release cycles are then
intertwined, which is the wrong thing for most projects.
I don't understand what you mean by PostgreSQL trying to be neutral.
Postgres focuses on what it's good at, being a database. It's not
really for or against anything. The PostgreSQL team is not interested
in maintaining code that so clearly falls outside of the scope.
Secondly, if there is a "large group of users" who want this, why
doesn't someone do it? Any one of them could take the source, and
produce a bundle (say a PostgresPHP Plus Pack) that has all the
features you think should be in there. If they can demonstrate they can
maintain it, perhaps the postgresql website can host it the same way it
hosts the windows installer packages (they're not part of postgres
either).
Finally, if there are a bunch of things that would make it easier to
use postgres from PHP, I think they should be part of PHP. Ask the
maintainer of the PHP-Postgres module if they would consider including
it there (has anyone asked them?). On a system dependancy level, PHP
lies on top of PostgreSQL so anything that uses both should be part of
PHP or higher.
Have a nice day,
--
Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog@svana.org> http://svana.org/kleptog/
> Patent. n. Genius is 5% inspiration and 95% perspiration. A patent is a
> tool for doing 5% of the work and then sitting around waiting for someone
> else to do the other 95% so you can sue them.