Re: Path to PostgreSQL portabiliy

Paul Ramsey wrote:
>
> mlw wrote:
> >
> > No matter what steps you take, cygwin will not be seen by Windows users as
> > anything but a sloppy/messy/horrible hack. It is a fact of life. You are
> > welcome to disagree, but I assure you it is true.
>
> Just to clarify here: is it confirmed that having the complete cygwin
> distribution is a necessary condition to having a running PostgreSQL on
> windows? Is it not possible that, having built postgresql with the full
> cygwin, it would be possible to make a nice clean setup.exe package
> which bundles the postgresql executables, the required cygwin dlls and
> other niceties into an easy install package? Given that, I do not think
> your putative windows user would care at all about what was going on
> under the covers. As long as the install was clean, there were utilities
> (pgadmin?) to start working with the database right away, and things
> "just worked", the ugliness (or exquisite symmetry... I am not an
> expert) of the fork() implementation really would not be an issue :)

Windows users expect to have C:\my programs\postgres as the install location. A
person who has used or looked at MSSQL would expect to deal with the real file
system. The cygwin environment shields the UNIX program from Windows, the
Windows user would expect the program to deal with the system as is.

The Windows user that would install PostgreSQL would expect it to be a real
windows program, but would be savvy enough (and prejudiced enough) to know if
it weren't.