Re: removing tsearch2

On Mon, Feb 13, 2017 at 3:09 AM, Jim Nasby <Jim(dot)Nasby(at)bluetreble(dot)com> wrote:

> On 2/10/17 2:24 PM, Andrew Dunstan wrote:
>
>> There's a bunch of these things in /contrib which really ought to be
>>> PGXN extensions (also CUBE, earthdistance, etc.). However, one of the
>>> steps in that would be getting the mainstream platforms to package them
>>> so that users have a reasonable upgrade path, so I would not propose
>>> doing it for 10.
>>>
>>
>> Part of the reason for keeping a number of extensions is that it helps
>> test our extension infrastructure. Also they server as good pieces of
>> example code. So I don't want to get rid of them all, or even any of
>> them that have any degree of significant use. I think these days
>> tsearch2 is very largely redundant, so that means there's a good reason
>> not to keep it. But that's not true of cube, isn etc.
>>
>
> That's based on an assumption that PGXN shouldn't be treated as part of
> the community effort, which I think is a mistake. Having a robust,
> community run extension/package/module framework has proven to be extremely
> valuable for other programming environments, and IMHO we should be striving
> to improve in that area.

Until pgxn has a way of helping users on for example Windows (or other
platforms where they don't have a pgxs system and a compiler around), it's
always going to be a "second class citizen".

It's certainly part of the community efforts in many ways, but it's a
significant loss of usability compared to things that are included. And
from the perspective of the testing the infrastructure, you'd loose a lot
of platform coverage (unless you can find a way to integrate pgxn building
with the buildfarm).

--
Magnus Hagander
Me: http://www.hagander.net/
Work: http://www.redpill-linpro.com/