Re: Contributing code

On Fri, May 19, 2006 at 09:37:30AM +0200, Martijn van Oosterhout wrote:
> On Thu, May 18, 2006 at 10:54:02PM -0700, Don Y wrote:
> > I assumed that the contents of ./contrib have NOT been
> > thoroughly tested/reviewed by the Postgres team (though
> > that is just an impression I have... i.e. why have those
> > features not been INTEGRATED into the codebase?)
>
> contrib has been tested to a reasonable level, maybe not as much as the
> core, but by including it, the core team takes some responsibility for
> its maintainence.
>
> The reasons they're not integrated are varied:
>
> - They don't need to be. What they do is not required for standards
> compliance and most people don't care. However, they're useful to
> enough people to ship with the main system.
>
> - What does "integration" mean anyway. Do we really want fuzzy string
> matching installed on every postgres system out there by default? In
> contrib they're easily available for people who want it.
>
> We're taking advantage of the fact that postgres is modular, which
> means we don't need to install heaps of crap into the main system, and
> instead users can choose which bits they want.

Also, some things in contrib are tied into the backend in such a way
that they're very version dependant, so it makes sense to keep them in
contrib.
--
Jim C. Nasby, Sr. Engineering Consultant jnasby(at)pervasive(dot)com
Pervasive Software http://pervasive.com work: 512-231-6117
vcard: http://jim.nasby.net/pervasive.vcf cell: 512-569-9461