Re: future of contrib/xml2 and xslt processing

Peter Eisentraut <peter(dot)eisentraut(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> writes:
> contrib/xml2 has been claimed to be deprecated since PostgreSQL 8.3. I
> took a look through the functions it offers and perhaps with xmltable
> now being available, they could all be replaced using built-in
> functions, perhaps with some small tweaking.

> But we don't have any replacement lined up for the XSLT processing
> function xslt_process. What should we do with that, assuming that we
> eventually want to remove contrib/xml2 altogether?

> 1. Just remove it, leaving users to find other solutions. (PL/P* can
> probably fill the gap.)

> 2. Create a new extension contrib/xslt, move the implementation there.
> (Optionally, have contrib/xml2 depend on this new extension if it is not
> ready to be removed.)

> 3. Add XSLT functionality to core (unlikely).

Option 2 seems like useless churn; we'd still have the same
not-very-high-quality code, just moved around.

I agree that moving the libxslt dependency into core isn't real
attractive either.

I suspect that the realistic alternatives are either option 1
or option 0: do nothing.

regards, tom lane