Re: [mail] Re: Windows Build System

Tom Lane wrote:
> "Dave Page" <dpage(at)vale-housing(dot)co(dot)uk> writes:
> > I would also point out that we already list the Cygwin port of
> > PostgreSQL as supported. Who ever gave that the kind of testing people
> > are demanding now? I think the worst case scenario will be that our
> > Win32 port is far better than the existing 'supported' solution.
>
> A good point --- but what this is really about is expectations. If we
> support a native Windows port then people will probably think that it's
> okay to run production databases on that setup;

Sure. But it's only common sense that a piece of software is only as
reliable as the platform it's running on.

People run production databases under MS-SQL all the time. Has MS-SQL
itself gained a reputation for being an unreliable piece of junk?
Perhaps. But if so, that obviously hasn't stopped people from putting
their production databases on it!

Is MS-SQL's reputation for unreliability, if any, because of MS-SQL
itself or the platform it's operating on? The way to answer that is
to ask the same question of Oracle and DB/2 under Windows. And
therefore, the answer seems to be that the platform is a minor
determinant, if any.

> whereas I doubt many
> people would think that about the Cygwin-based port.

Why not? Seriously, if the people in question are the simpletons that
you appear to be expecting them to be, then wouldn't they have that
same expectation of the Cygwin based port? Why not?

> So what we need to
> know is whether the platform is actually stable enough that that's a
> reasonable thing to do; so that we can plaster the docs with appropriate
> disclaimers if necessary.

Well, shouldn't we do that anyway, then, until we know otherwise?
Shouldn't we do that with *any* new port?

> Windows, unlike the other OSes mentioned in
> this thread, has a long enough and sorry enough track record that it
> seems appropriate to run such tests ...

With this I agree, but before you start thinking that Windows is the
only OS that qualifies, consider this: I've run the "pull the plug"
test under early Linux 2.4 kernels running with ReiserFS. I'd start a
make of a large project, pull the power, bring the system back up, and
restart the build. And the end result was that some of the files
files in the build directory were corrupted, such that the build could
not continue. I haven't tried this under current versions of the
kernel, so I don't know if things have improved or not.

Doesn't that -- shouldn't that -- give you pause about declaring
*Linux* an industrial-strength solution?

My point: if you're going to hold *one* OS to a given standard, you
should hold *all* of them to that same standard.

--
Kevin Brown kevin(at)sysexperts(dot)com