Re: Built-in plugin for logical decoding output

On 2017-09-25 19:32:29 +0200, Petr Jelinek wrote:
> On 25/09/17 19:26, Tom Lane wrote:
> > Alvaro Hernandez <aht(at)ongres(dot)com> writes:
> >> In my opinion, logical decoding plugins that don't come with core
> >> are close to worthless (don't get me wrong):
> >
> >> - They very unlikely will be installed in managed environments (an area
> >> growing significantly).
> >> - As anything that is not in core, raises concerns by users.
> >> - Distribution and testing are non-trivial: many OS/archs combinations.
> >
> > The problem with this type of argument is that it leads directly to the
> > conclusion that every feature users want must be in core. We can't
> > accept that conclusion, because we simply do not have the manpower or
> > infrastructure to maintain a kitchen-sink, Oracle-sized code base.
> > I think we're already more or less at the limit of the feature set we can
> > deal with :-(. The entire point of the output-plugin design was to allow
> > useful replication stuff to be done outside of core; we need to make use
> > of that. (If that means we need better docs, then yeah, we'd better get
> > that part done.)

I obvoiusly agree that not every possible output plugin should be put
into core. A number of them have significant external dependencies
and/or are specialized for a certain environment.

However I don't think that should mean that there's no possible output
plugin that could/should be integrated into core. And I think Petr's
right here:

> There is already about 3 million output plugins out there so I think we
> did reasonable job there. The fact that vast majority of that are
> various json ones gives reasonable hint that we should have that one in
> core though.

Greetings,

Andres Freund