Re: What I would say if someone asked me about no

Jan is right that we need Win32 maintainers. I want to set up a few
things to grow the group, just like Jan did when he added foreign keys:

o mailing list
o cvs branch
o web page

I haven't done it yet, because I wanted to get into beta, and have
pgindent run, so any change to the branch will cleanly merge. Now that
pgindent is done, I will start on that list shortly to grow a dedicated
group to get things moving.

I think I have made some progress because PostgreSQL now compiles on
MinGW. It is just signals and fork/exec that are left. We will have
cases of fork/exec breaking in the future due to changes in the code,
but I assume we will enough folks involved in the port at that point
that we can get them fixed quickly.

I think the marketing opportunity for Win32 is just too important. I am
no Win32 fan myself either, but we have to be on the platform to show
folks how good we are.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jan Wieck wrote:
> Bruce Momjian wrote:
>
> > I ran out of time, just like the PITR guy. Win32 takes tons of time,
> > and working on the PostgreSQL project itself just doesn't allow enough
> > time.
>
> It is also partly my fault, as I failed on the first attempt to redo the
> fork+exec part for Bruce, then got a bit frustrated over things not to
> be discussed publicly and didn't give it much attention, finally I had a
> ton of other things with higher priority after that. This is not an
> excuse, it's life, sorry.
>
> What really bugs me about the entire Win32 port discussion is something
> else. One of my activities at PeerDirect was to extract out the 7.2.1
> based Win32 port and contribute it as a patch. That patch went out on
> January 20, 2003. Applied to a 7.2.1 tree, it compiled under MS VC++ 6.0
> and produced a fully running native Win32 PostgreSQL. So far for what
> was available in January.
>
> Now more than half a year later we have no evidence that there will be
> qualified and capable maintainers for any Win32 port. Some of the main
> developers who implement big features and do the kind of work that can
> break a port easily, especially one that serves a tremendeously
> different API, have explicitly waved off any interest in Win32 support
> at all. This is a dangerous combination.
>
> Bruce and I had discussed this issue briefly and he is of course right
> that this sort of task requires deep PostgreSQL and Win32 knowledge,
> both of which takes time to build up. It's the kind of task that
> requires Core developer help to have any chance. Where I disagree by now
> is the definition of "help". Just doing the hard parts is not the kind
> of help needed here. If we do not get people growing into this position
> right now, there will be a gap between when the port is once done and
> when others with real Win32 interest will take over the duties. Will
> there ever be anyone willing to take over an already broken port? And I
> am sure if nobody is really committed on maintaining this port, it'll be
> broken in a few months.
>
> At this point I (personally) would rather not have a Win32 port at all,
> because all it is buying us under these circumstances will be bad
> reputation. We have come a long way and the fact that people do not
> reevaluate things is the reason they still "know" that PostgreSQL is
> slow and instable. Adding a bad maintained Win32 port is worse than not
> supporting Win32 at all. The latter might be missing an important
> platform, the former will build up long lasting bad reputation.
>
>
> Jan
>
> >
> > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Josh Berkus wrote:
> >> People,
> >>
> >> > Q. Hey, I read in a bunch of places that 7.4 was going to have native
> >> > windows support, what gives?
> >>
> >> My answer:
> >>
> >> A. PostgreSQL has a well-deserved reputation for "bulletproof" reliability and
> >> stability, which requires each new patch and plug-in to pass stringent
> >> community testing. The Win32 platform has proved to be more of a challenge
> >> than we anticipated in this regard, and we would rather release our Windows
> >> port late than release a version which might fail in production environments.
> >>
> >> But, Bruce, since you're head of the port, wanna comment on this? We're
> >> trying to prepare a "canned" answer for the inevitable questions.
> >>
> >> --
> >> Josh Berkus
> >> Aglio Database Solutions
> >> San Francisco
> >>
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> >>
> >
>
>
> --
> #======================================================================#
> # It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than for being right. #
> # Let's break this rule - forgive me. #
> #================================================== JanWieck(at)Yahoo(dot)com #
>
>
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--
Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us
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