Re: Runtime accepting build discrepancies

Thomas Hallgren <thhal(at)mailblocks(dot)com> writes:
> A user download a pre-built PostgreSQL 7.4.7 from somewhere and a
> pre-built pljava distro from gborg. He gets everything running but
> suddenly encounteres problems with the timetz type. PL/Java apparently
> return the time as zero. The problem is caused by the postgresql binary
> being built using --enable-integer-datetimes whereas the PL/Java binary
> is not.

Why is PL/Java dependent on the internal representation of any
particular datatype? Seems like this is a symptom of bad PL design
more than anything else.

> The dynamic loader doesn't detect this and I bet there's a ton of
> combinations that will link just fine but perhaps crash (badly) in
> runtime. I would like to detect discrepancies like this during runtime
> somehow. I feel that it's either that or stop providing pre-built
> binaries altogether. I realize that I can't be the only one with this
> problem. How is this normally handled?

If you want you can look into pg_control to see how the database is
set up.

regards, tom lane