Re: Pg V10: Patch for bug in bonjour support

On Thu, Nov 9, 2017 at 6:27 PM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> Thomas Munro <thomas(dot)munro(at)enterprisedb(dot)com> writes:
>> On Thu, Nov 9, 2017 at 5:03 PM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
>>> Is the AC_SEARCH_LIBS configure call needed to make PG build with the
>>> FreeBSD package?
>
>> Yes. My take is that the commit was correct: the library is needed
>> for --with-bonjour to work on non-macOS systems, and apparently it can
>> work (though I didn't personally try to assess that beyond seeing that
>> it could start up and connect to mdnsd). Perhaps Avahi doesn't
>> qualify as a suitable Bonjour implementation any more though, and
>> someone out there might like to consider writing a --with-avahi option
>> that uses the native API it's shouting about.
>
> I'm not sure what to do at this point. I concur that the AC_SEARCH_LIBS
> call is helpful if you're using mDNSResponder on FreeBSD (or wherever
> else that may be available) ... but I'm worried that it will enable
> people to create broken builds on Linux without trying very hard.
> We might be wise to deem that putting that call in is just creating
> an attractive nuisance.
>
> This would certainly be easier if we had a certifiably-working interface
> to the avahi library. But we don't, and I don't plan to write one,
> and I doubt anyone else will come out of the woodwork to do it either.
>
> Is there really much interest in Bonjour support on non-macOS platforms?
> I hadn't heard that anybody but Apple was invested in it.

Not from me. My only interest here was to pipe up because I knew that
what was originally proposed would have broken stuff on macOS, and
after that piqued curiosity. I won't mind at all if you revert the
commit to prevent confusion. If the intersection of FreeBSD,
PostgreSQL and Bonjour users is a non-empty set, [s]he might at least
find this archived discussion useful...

--
Thomas Munro
http://www.enterprisedb.com