Re: Call for 7.5 feature completion

On Thu, Sep 01, 2005 at 09:17:38AM +0800, William ZHANG wrote:
> > Dave Page wrote:
> > >
> > >>* Compile with MSVC on Win32 platforms. MySQL support it.
> > >>
> > >So what? It would take a major amount of work, with no useful benefits.
> >
> > ... and you can compile all the client and library stuff with MSVC -
> > just not the server nor extensions. But the audience for compiling those
> > is far smaller.
>
> I think the most popular method to build a project on Win32 is using
> MSVC or Intel C. Intel C can be integrated with MSVC's IDE to help
> developers increase their productivity. Actually I have tried to make
> the backend of pgsql-8.0.3 build with MSVC 6.0, and it works well.
> Should I polish it and send it as a patch?
>
> Having been a Win32 developer for several years, I think it is more
> convenient to use MSVC's IDE than CL.exe with NMAKE.exe.
> Although I do not like Microsoft very much, and like to use MinGW
> or Cygwin to do some small tests, MSVC is more suitable for
> native Win32 development. If pgsql want to be the first class citizen
> on Windows, and want to compete with MySQL, I think supporting
> MSVC is important. I beleive there will be many contributions from
> the Win32 world.

I think supporting MSVC is important, certainly (though I think that
supporting the Intel compiler is even better, as the only compelling
reason, IMO, to switch for the server end is generated code
quality). But that's very different from supporting visual studio.

I've been doing cross-platform development on a big codebase for
years, and the idea of trying to use the proprietary build
environments on each platform, and expecting to keep them sufficiently
in-sync that the end result is actually comparable on each platform is
laughable. And that's on a much smaller, simpler codebase than PG with
a much smaller, more integrated development team.

I use gmake or cons everywhere. On Windows I run them under cygwin and
have them call the MSVC commandline compiler. It all works fine. And
it doesn't stop me from using Visual Studio to edit the code, run the
debugger or anything like that. On OS X I can use XCode. On Solaris I
use the Forte environment. On Linux I use emacs and gcc. And that's
all on the same codebase with the same makefile checked out from the
same CVS repository.

Cheers,
Steve