Re: TAP test module - PostgresClient

Andrew Dunstan <andrew(dot)dunstan(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> writes:
> As for out-dating, if we used DBD::PgPP we'd not be not in great danger
> there - it doesn't appear to have changed for many years - latest
> version is dated 2010. If we were to use it we'd have a dependency on
> DBI, but that in itself doesn't seem a great burden.

[ blowing the dust off my old red fedora... ] Actually, there's a
different problem with this proposal: you can bet that DBD::Pg has got a
build dependency on Postgres. If Postgres starts to depend on DBD::Pg
then we've created circular-dependency hell for packagers. We could only
make that work if we carefully kept the DBD::Pg requirement *out* of
"make check" and anything else that a packager might care to run during
package sanity checks. I suppose maybe we could live with a restriction
like that, if we treat this like the SSL tests as something that doesn't
get run except by special manual invocation --- but that'd reduce its
utility greatly don't you think? And I fear there would be quite a risk
of somebody breaking the restriction because they weren't thinking about
it. I note that there are no buildfarm members running any distro
packaging script, so we wouldn't find out about unintended-dependency bugs
until packagers were trying to build a release.

I much prefer the other line of thought about doing whatever we need
to do to make psql workable for the desired type of tests. Or just
write a bespoke testing tool.

regards, tom lane