Re: deprecating contrib for PGXN

On 05/18/2011 10:30 AM, Dimitri Fontaine wrote:
> Darren Duncan <darren(at)darrenduncan(dot)net> writes:
>> Would now be a good time to start deprecating the contrib/ directory as a
>> way to distribute Pg add-ons, with favor given to PGXN and the like instead?
>
> The first important fact is that contrib/ code is maintained by the
> PostgreSQL-core product team, and I guess they prefer to have it all in
> a single git repository. Some contribs are only there so that we know
> when we break extensibility features, so it would be bad to move them
> away.
>
> The other problem is that the facility we need to provide the most is
> binary distributions (think apt-get). Lots of site won't ever compile
> stuff on their production servers. So while PGXN is a good tool, it's
> not a universal answer.

yeah moving contrib/ to pgxn will significantly reduce its usefulness -
a lot of places have a policy that will allow stuff that is packaged by
the OS-supplier (and that will include the contrib-package) but there is
no way at all that they will allow something like pgxn or cpan or any
other "from source" installation method.
So by moving contrib somewhere else we will loose a lot of functionality
in those scenarios.

Stefan