Re: Packaging 7.1.1

Karl DeBisschop writes:

> PostgreSQL builds are great for the portability. The next logical step
> might in fact be to extend some of that consistency to the package
> creation arena.

This would have been cool in 1996. We would have evolved a large number
of different packages along with the build system. But it didn't happen
this way and now most packages are sufficiently contorted in a number of
ways because of vendor requirements, different ideas of how an operating
system is supposed to work, self-inflicted incompatibilities, and a number
of other reasons, including not least importantly the desire to have
control over what ships in your system. All valid reasons, of course.

If we can work at, and succeed at, resolving most of these oddities, then
tracking packages in the source tree might prove worthwhile. But as long
as we're still required to keep track what vendor has 'chkconfig' or what
version of what distribution has broken CFLAGS, to list some trivial
things, as long as the packages need to track anything but the development
of PostgreSQL itself, this undertaking is going to become a problem.

What would be worthwhile is setting up another cvs module so packages can
be developed and released at their own pace.

--
Peter Eisentraut peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net http://funkturm.homeip.net/~peter