Re: Feature patch 1 for plperl [PATCH]

Robert Haas wrote:
> Anyway, I think you've put this pretty well here: the current
> definition will make people WANT to use multi-line values for this,
> and we don't support that.  I think Tim's example is fairly contrived
> - setting a global variable here does not seem likely to be useful to
> very many users, and the ones who do want it will likely want also
> want multi-line values.  What IS likely to be useful is preloading a
> bunch of perl modules so that backend startup doesn't take an
> unreasonably long time.  It's nicer to write:
>
> plperl.on_perl_init='strict,warnings,LDAP,HTML::Parser,Archive::Zip'
>
> rather than:
>
> plperl.on_perl_init='use strict;use warnings;use LDAP;use
> HTML::Parser;use Archive::Zip;'
>   

I don't know why you would do either of these things. I at least would 
load one module which would in turn load others. So I'd expect to see 
something like this:
   plperl.on_perl_init = 'use lib "/my/app"; use MyApp::Pg;'

I think the suggestion that somehow people will want to put a huge list 
of directives straight into postgresql.conf and that this is a reason 
not to provide this facility is on the wrong track completely.

> I would strongly suggest to Tim that he rip the portions of this patch
> that are related to this feature out and submit them separately so
> that we can commit the uncontroversial portions first.
>
>
>   

See my previous email. I suggested that Tim send three patches: one for 
this controversial stuff, one for the new utility functions for plperl, 
and one for the remainder. He and I have discussed it and I believe he 
is agreeable to that.

cheers

andrew