Re: PostgreSQL 9.3 beta breaks some extensions "make install"

On 5/14/13 5:45 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
> We changed to using install-sh unconditionally back in 2001 because
> we had too many problems with system-provided scripts that didn't do
> what we expected. I see very little reason to believe that the
> compatibility problems have disappeared since then, and in fact this
> complaint seems to me to be sufficient to refute that thesis.

The compatibility issues in 2001 were completely different ones and were
explicitly resolved with a new configure check (which is used worldwide
by thousands of packages, note). Let's not confuse the issue.

> The argument that the system-provided program might be faster carries
> very little weight for me --- "make install" is fast enough already.

It is not for me. Note also that make install is part of test runs.

> It's not worth making a bunch of extension authors jump through hoops,
> whether their style was bad or not.

Well, I consider that this is not a style issue. It's an issue of
wide-spread bugginess caused by uninformed copy-and-paste, and I'm glad
we found it. Considering the widespread crappiness in PostgreSQL
extension makefiles, I don't consider it a problem that a few things
need to be fixed.

That said, I'm obviously outnumbered here. What about the following
compromise: Use the configure-selected install program inside
PostgreSQL (which we can test easily), and use install-sh under
USE_PGXS? Admittedly, the make install time of extensions is probably
not an issue.

(The affected extensions will still be buggy because users can still
substitute their own install programs. We're just hiding the issue for
a while.)