Re: OK, lets talk portability.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jean-Michel POURE [mailto:jm(dot)poure(at)freesurf(dot)fr]
> Sent: 08 May 2002 09:37
> To: mlw; Dann Corbit
> Cc: PostgreSQL-development
> Subject: Re: OK, lets talk portability.
>
> There is other issues :
>
> 1) Cygwin installation.
>
> Presently, Cygwin installer is a nice toy but it is primarily
> designed for
> hackers. In order to install PostgreSQL, you need to install
> a minimum set of
> packages. As no real dependency between packages exist, a
> newbee will not
> know which packages should be downloaded and which should
> not. Also, Cygwin
> installer does not allow the automatic installation of
> PostgreSQL within a
> service.
>
> The result is that newbees eather download ***all*** Cygwin
> packages or simply
> say no. Furthermore, after installation, people are facing
> another issue
> which is the Unix world. Users have a hard time understanding
> that PostgreSQL
> configuration is stored in /var/lib/pgsql/...
>
> So my personal opinion is that if PostgreSQL relies on the
> present Cygwin
> version, it has no chance to get a standard solution under Windows.

Agreed. I develop pgAdmin using cygwin/postgresql on my laptop and quite
frankly it's a pain in the neck. I did notice when playing with MySQL
recently that it appears to use Cygwin, though *only* the .dll, there is
no installation of Cygwin required. Perhaps if we could get to roughly
that stage it would be good. Of course we'd also need a few things from
/bin like sh for example.

If we can get it to this stage then I'm sure Jean-Michel and I could
come up with a nice installer that will allow us to keep the GPL & BSD
code nicely separate on a swerver somewhere & still allow an automated
download/install...

> 3) Existing version of PostgreSQL under Windows
> Did anyone test
> http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA023283/Postgr> eSQLe.html

Downloaded it but haven't played yet (blame it on a cranky Exchange
server!).

Regards, Dave.