Re: Roadmap for Postgres on AIX

On 19 March 2013 01:00, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:

> Wasim Arif <wasimarif(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> > What is the road map for Postgres on the AIX platform? I understand that
> > the pg build farm contains an AIX 5.3 server; are there any plans to
> > upgrade to 6.1 and 7.1?
>
> The reason there's an AIX 5.3 buildfarm member is that someone cares
> enough about preserving portability to that platform to provide a
> buildfarm member. If you're worried about other AIX releases, I suggest
> you do likewise. It's not a huge burden. Basic info about it is here:
> http://buildfarm.postgresql.org/cgi-bin/register-form.pl
>
> By and large, our approach to AIX is the same as to any other platform:
> we'll support it as long as users of the platform provide testing and
> any necessary portability fixes. That burden might fall more directly
> on you, as one of a relatively small number of users, than it would on
> somebody using say Linux or BSD. But as long as you are willing to do
> some of the work you need not fear that we're planning to abandon you.
>

For those organisations running PostgreSQL on AIX, I wonder if it would be
possible for a member of 'IBM PartnerWorld' to use the free 'Virtual
Loaner' programme[1] to set up build farm members on a range of AIX
versions and POWER chips.

My employer is in this category, but I am not in a position to contribute
company time patches or resources currently (although that might change).
From memory we've had to make a couple of local tweaks to makefiles for
our particular versions of things, although we are mostly focussed on
clients on AIX, not the server. But perhaps some of the other (rare!) AIX
users from the list might be able to look into VPL farm animals?

[1] http://www-304.ibm.com/partnerworld/wps/pub/systems/vlp/index