[Pljava-dev] Working on 1.4 beta release

Kris Jurka wrote:
> Now that the move to pgfoundry is complete we can focus on the 1.4
> release. I think now's a good time to put out a beta and see if we can
> get some people to test it. There's a couple of questions I have:
>
> 1) What server versions to support? I was thinking of building binary
> releases for 8.1 -> 8.3 for win32, linux-i386, linux-amd64, and perhaps
> solaris-i386 as those are the platforms I have access to.
>
>
Personally, I think this is fairly ambitious for the PL/Java project. My
take historically has been to provide win32 and linux-x86 only since I
don't see the PL/Java project as a binary distributor. The permutations
tend to grow and the task of maintaining all of them becomes significant.

A win32 binary is important because it requires a build environment that
is less then intuitive to obtain and install correctly. For most other
variants, I think a good instruction on how to build the binary is more
important.

> 2) What options should the server be built with? Since pljava picks up
> these options via PGXS, the server configuration will affect the pljava
> builds. Shoule --enable-debug be used? On a related note, should we try
> to build the java code with -g if we find --enable-debug?
>
>
Whan a crash occurs, the JVM will make an attempt to walk the stack and
it usually prints out a fairly decent stack trace. So my vote would be
to keep it in there. There has been several occasions where I've been
able to do more then just qualified guessing based on that information.

> 3) What should be done with the docs in CVS that go into the release? They
> overlap the wiki greatly, and I have no desire to duplicate that work, but
> I don't think we can drop them entirely without doing some merging work.
> What's the minimal amount of information that we can put into the
> releases? Should we make an architecture independent doc release or do
> the docs depend on the server version built against?
>
>
Ideally, all documentation should be kept in the CVS together with the
source at some point. The use of the wiki for documenting was more an
attempt to get collaboration going. It didn't happen. At some point I
think all docs should be moved over and the wiki should point to some
place where the doc is mirrored from the CVS but I don't think this need
to happen for the 1.4 release.

I think a lot would be gained if a new 1.4 source bundle was made
available together with binaries for win32 and linux x86 for PostgreSQL
versions 8.2 and 8.3. That's the really important thing IMO.

Kind Regards,
Thomas Hallgren