All,
I really don't see why we would object to making *anything* pluggable if
someone was willing to write the code to do so. For example, making
storage pluggable would allow PostgreSQL to achieve great new things on
new types of hardware. (yes, I have some idea how difficult this would be)
For that matter, our pluggable languages, operators, aggregates, and
UDFs are the mainsteam of PostgreSQL adoption -- and as hardware and
technology changes in the future, I believe that our database's
programmability will become the *entire* use case for PostgreSQL.
So I really can't see any plausible reason to be opposed to pluggable
indexes *in principle*. We should be promoting pluggability whereever
we can reasonably add it.
Now, like always, that says nothing about the quality of this particular
patch or whether it *really* moves us closer to pluggable indexes.
--Josh Berkus