Re: Collation version tracking for macOS

On Sat, 21 Jan 2023 at 02:24, Jeff Davis <pgsql(at)j-davis(dot)com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 2023-01-19 at 00:11 -0800, Jeff Davis wrote:
> > Attached are a new set of patches, including a major enhancement: the
> > icu_multilib contrib module.
>
> Attached rebased v8.
>
> [ It looks like my email client truncated the last email somehow, in
> case someone was wondering why it just stopped. ]
>
> The big change is the introduction of the icu_multilib contrib module
> which provides a lot of the functionality requested in this thread:
>
> * icu version stability, which allows you to "lock down" ICU to a
> specific major and minor version (or major version only)
> * multi-lib ICU, which (if a GUC is set) will enable the "search by
> collversion" behavior. Some doubts were raised about the wisdom of this
> approach, but it's the only multi-lib solution we have without doing
> some significant catalog work.
>
> I rendered the HTML docs for icu_multilib and attached to this email to
> make it easier to view.
>
> icu_multilib assumes that the various ICU library versions are already
> available in a single location, most likely installed with a package
> manager. That location can be the same as the built-in ICU, or a
> different location. Ideally, packagers would start to offer a few
> "stable" versions of ICU that would be available for a long time, but
> it will take a while for that to happen. So for now, it's up to the
> user to figure out how to get the right versions of ICU on their system
> and keep them there.
>
> Automated tests of icu_multilib are a problem unless the one running
> the tests is willing to compile the right versions of ICU (like I did).
> But I at least have automated tests for the hooks by using the test
> module test_collator_lib_hooks.
>
> The v7 patches in this thread are dependent on the pure refactoring
> patches in this CF entry:
>
> https://commitfest.postgresql.org/41/3935/
>
> https://postgr.es/m/052a5ed874d110be2f3ae28752e363306b10966d.camel@j-davis.com
>
> The requested functionality _not_ offered by icu_multilib is tying a
> specific collation to a specific ICU version. A few variants were
> proposed, the latest is to tie a collation to the library file itself
> through the provider. That needs to be done with proper catalog support
> in core. But I believe the work I've done here has made a lot of
> progress in that direction, and also shows the versatility of the new
> hook to solve at least some problems.

This thread has been idle for a year now, It has stalled after a lot
of discussion.
@Jeff Davis: Do you want to try to restart the discussion by posting
an updated version and see what happens?

Regards,
Vignesh