Re: EnterpriseDB Postgres

Dave Page wrote:
> Joshua D. Drake wrote:
>> No it was a complete distribution. Not it was not point in click well
>> except that you could use *standard* tools ;) such as yum/apt etc.. (we
>> never did get yum working quite right).
>
> OK
>
>> And breaking package management in the process. I am not trying to start
>> a war here, but really, if it was done correctly you would have set up
>> and apt server, a yum server etc... which is much more in line with the
>> goal I would think.
>
> It doesn't break it, it sits entirely outside of it, allowing it to run
> on pretty much any vaguely recent distro. You mention youself that you
> never really got Yum to work properly - imagine the effort it would take
> to cover all the major distros using the native package management. Even
> Devrim's job is complex enough just covering the Redhat distros for the
> core server, and pgAdmin at different times.
>
> This is why the likes of Oracle and IBM use similar non-specific
> installera.

actually oracle has packages for their express edition that work quite
nice on a number of platforms:

http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/database/xe/htdocs/102xelinsoft.html

>
>> But that won't happen. Instead the users will be contained in the bubble
>> that is the installer package (any not just EDB) and then when we say,
>
> Better that than they not use PostgreSQL at all.
>
>> download the latest RPMs, debs, use apt, use ports.. whatever, they go
>> what? Please repeat.
>
> Our intent is to produce new builds on the community schedule, as well
> as additional point releases to pick up new versions of Apache, PHP,
> Slony, pgAdmin etc. I can pretty much guarantee they'll be able to
> upgrade to a newer version as quickly, if not more quickly than the user
> of an OS distribution.

the problem comes if you need the OS or generally apps to interact with
the database. Most distributions have a large number of packages and a
lot of them depend on say libpq or even say the postgresql client utils.
Since the OS has no clue about your "independent" package it will
usually install their own copy which could cause even more confusion
(and problems) for some users(like ending up with two different versions
of psql in the simplest case).
This is probably not that much a problem on Windows (which does not have
that kind of packaging usually) but I guess it could be on other platforms.

Stefan