Re: RFC: PostgreSQL Add-On Network

robertmhaas@gmail.com (Robert Haas) writes:
> On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 10:12 AM, Dave Page <dpage@pgadmin.org> wrote:
>>> I have long spoken against making Windows a second class citizen. But I
>>> don't think David is going to do that (and I'll hound him if he does). But
>>> that doesn't mean it has to be fully supported from day one.
>>
>> I'm not saying it should be supported from day 1, but I think the
>> initial plan will make it very difficult to add Windows support later
>> without a great deal of rewriting/redesign. It's lack of forward
>> planning I was objecting to.
>
> I personally suspect that the client is not the most important part of
> this project.  I think the value of CPAN is for searching, more than
> auto-installing.  Personally, I never use the auto-install feature
> because I always want more control than you get that way.  I just use
> the site to find possible modules and browse the docs, and then if I
> find something I like I check with I can pull it from the Red Hat
> repos with rpm, and if not I download it and look it over to see if it
> DWIW, and then if so I usually make a private SRPM for it and install
> from that.  I'd be happy if we just had a good search-and-download
> site.

If "PGAN" leads to us having:
a) A database containing a useful set of metadata about a large set of   extensions, and
b) A way for PostgreSQL developers and binary distribution makers (who   *do* have GCC / XCode / MingW / Visual Studio
/... available to   them) to easily:     - build     - test     - try out     - think about how to package   that large
setof extensions
 

then we've got a Big Win of the same sort as CPAN, Ruby Gems, and PyPI.

It does NOT need to include installers for every known kind of computer;
that is a *second* problem, which actually requires a series of
solutions for:a) Fedorab) Debian (hence derivatives like Ubuntu)c) BSD Portsd) Yes, Windowse) I think Solaris has
somethingnew for packaging...
 

If David gets it to the point where it's easy to build and install
extensions into a PostgreSQL installation, then turning that into
packages for specific targets should be a not-insurmountable problem
that may be treated separately.

> That having been said, we should consider our filesystem layout
> carefully however to make sure that if we want to provide things like
> Windows installers in the future, we have a clean way to do that.

If the extensions get installed in a way that is "scalable" in the sense
that it's not a particularly big deal to write a script that pulls 250
extensions and installs them on a particular host for a particular PG
installation, then I'd think that the exercise has been a successful
one.

That leads, naturally enough, to an "Extension BuildFarm" :-).

I'd be somewhat surprised if the use of Windows was a material factor in
the matter.
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