Re: Embedding postgresql in an application

Sam,

> Josh, I am trying to figure out all the reasons and navigate through
> this myself. I can give two reasons. It may or may not be strong
> reasons from your point of view.

Neither of them are very good reasons from my point of view. Both
reasons can be solved more easily than creating your own packaging.

Mostly, it seems like you're asking asking "I want to get from Chicago
to Atlanta via Dubai". Possible, but difficult and rather roundabout
for no good reason.

> I have been able to manually install and bring up postgresql on
> Ubuntu 12.04 desktop version using the binary tar file from
> EnterpriseDB web site. It was very straightforward. I am not arguing
> that this is the most optimum way, but I still believe that the good
> old option of expanding a binary tar file on Unix should work and it
> may come handy in certain situations. Even Firefox folks have not
> abandoned this approach and you can still get the binary tar files
> from their ftp web site.

Your big issue there is library dependancies and linking. PostgreSQL
doesn't have many, but it does have a few. If you expand binaries on a
system which has a later version of glibc, for example, you might get
some unexpected behavior. This sort of thing is why we *have* packaging
systems. Also, then you need to package up updates for your customers
every time a PostgreSQL update comes out, instead of relying on the OS
vendor or community.

--
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
http://pgexperts.com