Re: Who puts the Windows binaries on the FTP server?

Dave Page wrote:
> It's rumoured that Justin Clift once said:
>
>>There's more to making PostgreSQL work on Windows than just the "pure
>>packaging" issues. We still have to figure out how we're going to
>>handle stuff like needed grep, sed, etc just for PostgreSQL to run
>>(they're required by initdb).
>
> I thought the idea was initdb would be rewritten in C. We cannot include
> grep/sed etc as they're GPL...

I heard Peter mention that, but my email seems to be a tad spotty and I
haven't come across the rest of the conversation about it.

That would be really good of course, as it reduces the external
dependencies. :)

>>We're also going to need to have a good idea of what other nice
>>features could/should be packaged along with it. i.e.:
>>
>> + a GUI to control some things (installation/deinstallation of the
>> PostgreSQL Service, perhaps vacuuming, etc).
>
>
> Hang on, I heard of a good one the other day... :-)

There's a couple of potentials. ;-)

>> + Shortcuts in the Program menu to things (PostgreSQL website(s),
>> online documentation, etc)
>
> Those are just decisions to make aren't they? They don't require a Cygwin
> proof of concept.

Sure. But I hadn't thought about them until building the cygwin proof
of concept. Think of it as a "test run" to see what kind of things it
brought to mind. :)

Another thing is the international support. The Proof of Concept
version was a bad hack in that it forced installation into "C:\Program
Files\PostgreSQL". For non-english versions of Windows, they have
"C:\Program Files" being names to other things, dependant on the
language. This broke the installation of course. :(

With a proper installer (as you've mentioned), that shouldn't be a
problem as it should automatically install into the correct "PostgreSQL"
subdirectory of whatever the equivalent of "Program Files" is, on
whatever drive. Registry entries (if used) should properly match of course.

>> + Which parts of the installation should be mandatory, and which
>> should
>> be optional. i.e. Base server files should be mandatory, HTML docs
>> should be optional, perhaps include the ODBC driver as optional too.
>
> Likewise, these are decisions to make and then suitable programming of the
> installer. Making bits optional should be trivial in any good installer.
> Don't get me wrong, I think it's great that someone has finally built a
> good Cygwin based package - I just don't think it answers many of the
> issues that we will likely encounter.

No, but it brought some of them to light. :)

> Regards, Dave.
>
> PS. Is the source on the ftpsite - if not you'll have Jason after you
> before long :-)

The source? It's the standard version of cygwin. It's just packaged
differently. :)

The packaging scripts themselves though have gone into the ether
forever, as the drive they were on was lost a few weeks ago (rebooted
one day and it didn't come back). :( If absolutely needed, we could
reverse engineer them back from the installation package. (painful)

Regards and best wishes,

Justin Clift

--
"My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those
who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the
first group; there was less competition there."
- Indira Gandhi