Re: Everything is now "required by the database system"

Hannu Krosing <hannu(at)tm(dot)ee> writes:
> On Tue, 2002-08-13 at 22:38, Tom Lane wrote:
>> It's still "extensible", it's just not so easily "contractible"...
>>
>> I'm not sure that this matters, as I've never heard of anyone actually
>> troubling to remove unused datatypes etc.

> It could become an issue if PostgreSQL became populat in embedded
> systems, but then it can of course be done in include/catalog/.

For an embedded system I'd think you'd want to strip out the support
code for the unwanted types (ie, the utils/adt/ file(s)), not only the
catalog entries. So it's source code changes in any case. The catalog
entries alone occupy so little space that it's not even worth anyone's
trouble to remove them, AFAICS.

> Probably every type not used in system tables themselves could be made
> loadable after initdb.

It certainly *could* be done. Whether it's worth the trouble is highly
doubtful. I'd also be concerned about the performance hit (loadable
functions are noticeably slower than built-ins).

Again, when was the last time you heard of anyone actually bothering to
remove built-in entries from pg_proc or pg_type? I can't see expending
a considerable amount of work on a "feature" that no one will use.

regards, tom lane