Re: Collation version tracking for macOS

On 12/5/22 12:41, Jeff Davis wrote:
> On Mon, 2022-12-05 at 16:12 +1300, Thomas Munro wrote:
>> 1.  I think we should seriously consider provider = ICU63.  I still
>> think search-by-collversion is a little too magical, even though it
>> clearly can be made to work.  Of the non-magical systems, I think
>> encoding the choice of library into the provider name would avoid the
>> need to add a second confusing "X_version" concept alongside our
>> existing "X_version" columns in catalogues and DDL syntax, while
>> still
>> making it super clear what is going on.
>
> As I understand it, this is #2 in your previous list?
>
> Can we put the naming of the provider into the hands of the user, e.g.:
>
> CREATE COLLATION PROVIDER icu63 TYPE icu
> AS '/path/to/libicui18n.so.63', '/path/to/libicuuc.so.63';
>
> In this model, icu would be a "provider kind" and icu63 would be the
> specific provider, which is named by the user.
>
> That seems like the least magical approach, to me. We need an ICU
> library; the administrator gives us one that looks like ICU; and we're
> happy.

+1

I like this. The provider kind defines which path we take in our code,
and the specific library unambiguously defines a specific collation
behavior (I think, ignoring bugs?)

--
Joe Conway
PostgreSQL Contributors Team
RDS Open Source Databases
Amazon Web Services: https://aws.amazon.com