Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> writes:
> Look at other large projects with lots of options. Apache, Perl, Linux, Java,
> emacs, KDE, etc., all of them strike a balance between including stuff and
> leaving stuff as add-ins (some more narrowly than others), and exclude a lot
> of popular and useful stuff on a variety of criteria. Our current balance is
> on the minimalist side, and somewhat arbitrary if you look at the /contrib
> directory. If you think there's a better balance, propose it. Seriously.
Well I think you inadvertently pointed out why the distinction between these
projects and Postgres. You described them as "projects with lots of options".
By comparison Postgres has a fairly small and manageable set of options.
modules.apache.org lists 393 Apache modules. Perl has 7,976 modules on CPAN,
and of course the number of applications for Linux isn't even worth counting.
pgfoundry has 88 projects.
All of these projects grew up gradually through a natural evolutionary
process. At first lots of stuff was included in any of these. It's only when
there are enough projects to make it worthwhile for anyone to look in these
outside repositories like CPAN or modules.apache.org that they hit critical
mass and become self-sustaining.
I'm not saying pgfoundry should be shut down. But trying to force projects out
into the sterile landscape where they get little use and little support is a
death warrant. And unnecessary.
I think what I would suggest is going through pgfoundry, and checking in the
stable release of any good looking project into the contrib directory of the
Postgres distribution.
--
greg