Re: apple uses Postgres for RemoteDesktop 2

Joel <rees(at)ddcom(dot)co(dot)jp> writes:
> "Scott Marlowe" <smarlowe(at)qwest(dot)net> wrote
>> Why can't the user and the OS use the same server?

> Apple does some "weird" stuff with things.

We learned this lesson from Cobalt, actually. Even if the OS installs
an absolutely vanilla version of Postgres, it's a bad idea. The first
problem is that the user may want to use a different PG version than the
OS does. ("Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but soon ... and
for the rest of your life ...") The second problem is that the user is
going to want superuser privs over his database, including the ability
to rm -rf it, initdb it, and possibly crash it if he's doing
development; this is not something you want happening to part of the
core GUI. (Cobalt had this problem in spades because their PG database
*was* part of the core GUI. Screw around with it, and you'd be lucky if
you could log in again. I trust that Remote Desktop isn't that core to
OS X, but I'd still not care to admin that database while logged in
through Remote Desktop.) Even if you think that Joe Average User won't
want to do this stuff, a Postgres developer who owns an Apple machine
(moi for instance) certainly will. Is it in Apple's interest to make
life hard for the developers of a technology they are depending on?

> I suppose that the best advice to give the OP on this is to point out
> how he can set up his own install of postgresql to use another port.

This is backwards. The OS should stay out of the user's way, not vice
versa. If the OS wants its own private PG server, I am surely all for
that ... but it should not commandeer the port the user would expect to
use for *his* PG server.

regards, tom lane