Re: Configurable location for extension .control files

On 06/12/2013 08:52 AM, Tom Dunstan wrote:
> Hi Josh
> 
> On 11 June 2013 04:37, Josh Berkus  wrote:
> 
>> I don't personally see a reason for plural locations, but it would be
>> nice if it recursed (that is, looked for .so's in subdirectories).  My
>> reason for this is that I work on applications which have in-house
>> extensions as well as public ones, and I'd like to keep the two
>> separated by directory.
> 
> 
> I gave one example of a use-case for multiple directories upthread - the
> Postgres.app mac app has contrib, plv8 and postgis bundled under its
> application folder, but it would be nice to allow users to drop extra
> extensions under ~/Library/Postgres.app somewhere.

Postgres.app is the source of quite a lot of other pain too, though. One
of the bigger problems is that people want/need to link to its libpq
from client drivers like Ruby's Pg gem, but almost inevitably instead
link to libpq from Apple's ancient pre-installed PostgreSQL.

I think this is a far bigger problem than extension locations, and
people trying to do private per-application packaging trees will have
similar issues.

Without a solution to how to sanely share the client libraries I'm not
sure private-tree-packaged PostgreSQL is interesting enough to really
worry about making extensions easier to install. After all, users can
currently just open Postgres.app as a folder and drop the exts in there,
or use PGXS and "make install", just like usual.

-- Craig Ringer                   http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training & Services