Where are we on this? Peter thought the consistency makes sense, but if we can provide functionality that doesn't require libxml, why not do it?
I'm still for --enable-xml and putting _everything_ XML-related under this option. My main points are: - we cannot guarantee that existing libxml2-free functions will not require them in the future (because libxml2 contains useful routines); - libxml2-free functions (e.g. Peter's XML mapping functions, http://momjian.us/main/writings/pgsql/sgml/functions-xml.html#FUNCTIONS-XML-MAPPING) produce XML values, but we cannot use XPath function for them unless we have libxml2; - people will make errors, trying to understand what needs libxml2, and what doesn't -- approach "all or nothing" is simple and straightforward;
Well, it seems that I have no more arguments :-) If there is no objections, I'll send the patch tonight. If I am wrong and it's better to leave libxml2-free capabilities, then IMHO we need to reflect it explicitly in the docs, what requires libxml2, and what doesn't