Re: Should we work around msvc failing to compile tab-complete.c?

Andres Freund <andres(at)anarazel(dot)de> writes:
> Given that - afaict - tab completion never used to work with msvc, I think
> it'd be ok to just do it in 17 or 16+17 or such. Obviously nobody is currently
> building with readline support for windows - not sure if any packager is going
> to go back and add support for it in older branches.

If it doesn't even compile in existing branches, that seems to me to
be plenty enough reason to call it a new HEAD-only feature. That
gives us some leeway for experimentation and a more invasive patch
than we might want to risk in stable branches.

> On 2024-07-08 14:18:03 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
>> Could we perhaps have a table of first words of each interesting
>> match, and do a lookup in that before dispatching to code segments
>> that are individually similar to what's there now?

> Eventually it seems yet, it ought to be table driven in some form. But I
> wonder if that's setting the bar too high for now. Even just doing some manual
> re-nesting seems like it could get us quite far?

What I'm thinking is that (as you say) any fix that's not as ugly
as Kirk's hack is going to involve massive reindentation, with
corresponding breakage of any pending patches. It would be a
shame to do that twice, so I'd rather look for a long-term fix
instead of putting in a stop-gap.

Let me play with the "table" idea a little bit and see what
I get.

regards, tom lane