Re: RFC: PostgreSQL Add-On Network

robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com (Robert Haas) writes:
> On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 10:12 AM, Dave Page <dpage(at)pgadmin(dot)org> wrote:
>>> I have long spoken against making Windows a second class citizen. But I
>>> don't think David is going to do that (and I'll hound him if he does). But
>>> that doesn't mean it has to be fully supported from day one.
>>
>> I'm not saying it should be supported from day 1, but I think the
>> initial plan will make it very difficult to add Windows support later
>> without a great deal of rewriting/redesign. It's lack of forward
>> planning I was objecting to.
>
> I personally suspect that the client is not the most important part of
> this project. I think the value of CPAN is for searching, more than
> auto-installing. Personally, I never use the auto-install feature
> because I always want more control than you get that way. I just use
> the site to find possible modules and browse the docs, and then if I
> find something I like I check with I can pull it from the Red Hat
> repos with rpm, and if not I download it and look it over to see if it
> DWIW, and then if so I usually make a private SRPM for it and install
> from that. I'd be happy if we just had a good search-and-download
> site.

If "PGAN" leads to us having:

a) A database containing a useful set of metadata about a large set of
extensions, and

b) A way for PostgreSQL developers and binary distribution makers (who
*do* have GCC / XCode / MingW / Visual Studio / ... available to
them) to easily:
- build
- test
- try out
- think about how to package
that large set of extensions

then we've got a Big Win of the same sort as CPAN, Ruby Gems, and PyPI.

It does NOT need to include installers for every known kind of computer;
that is a *second* problem, which actually requires a series of
solutions for:
a) Fedora
b) Debian (hence derivatives like Ubuntu)
c) BSD Ports
d) Yes, Windows
e) I think Solaris has something new for packaging...

If David gets it to the point where it's easy to build and install
extensions into a PostgreSQL installation, then turning that into
packages for specific targets should be a not-insurmountable problem
that may be treated separately.

> That having been said, we should consider our filesystem layout
> carefully however to make sure that if we want to provide things like
> Windows installers in the future, we have a clean way to do that.

If the extensions get installed in a way that is "scalable" in the sense
that it's not a particularly big deal to write a script that pulls 250
extensions and installs them on a particular host for a particular PG
installation, then I'd think that the exercise has been a successful
one.

That leads, naturally enough, to an "Extension BuildFarm" :-).

I'd be somewhat surprised if the use of Windows was a material factor in
the matter.
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