Re: in-catalog Extension Scripts and Control parameters (templates?)

Craig Ringer <craig(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> writes:
> There hasn't been visible movement on this work since the 22'nd when you
> posted v3 and it was flagged for further review. Nobody's stepped up,
> can we get any interest in this?

I hope we can, it's a pretty important development as far as I'm
concerned, a building block for other improvements that won't need
further assistance from core code.

> What's your opinion on the state of this patch? Are you satisfied with
> the proposed patch as it stands? Any particular areas you think need
> attention in review or during final committer examination? Any security
> concerns?

I think the patch is ready for a commiter. What I think the commiter
will want to change is here:

- hstore changes

The patch reverts the hstore--1.1.sql changes to show that with the
default_major_version included before, we could have chosen to ship
with hstore--1.0.sql and hstore--1.0--1.1.sql and install 1.1 by
default in more recent releases

- docs

We might need to add some more high-level docs about the feature,
like a worked out example in the main Extension section (35.15), but
I felt time pressed and that's typically something that can be done
while in beta

- catalog names

This patch needs 3 new catalogs, named pg_extension_control,
pg_extension_template and pg_extension_uptmpl for the Templates you
use to Update an extension (not the same natural PK as the ones you
use to insert).

The decision to use 3 catalogs has been validated earlier by Tom.
The focus point is on the naming: uptmpl is meant to be as short as
possible while still being easy to understand. Is that the case?

- psql support

When compared to current EXTENSION facilities, psql support here
would mean the ability to see an extension's scripts and control
file from psql directly, and we didn't feel like we should add that
after tall. So there's no psql support in that patch, other than
including the TEMPLATEs in pg_available_extensions().

- pg_available_extension_versions() support

Oooops, I didn't add that yet. Follow-up patch needed. Do we want a
new full patch or just a patch on-top of that for later applying?
This patch certainly is big enough as it is…

- Assert() HeapTuple's catalog

In the function extract_ctlversion() I would like to be able to
Assert() that the given tuple is from the right catalog and didn't
see how to do that

Other than that, the patch implements 3 new catalogs and associated
commands, and route those commands in a way that the new grammar
additions are not tied to EXTENSION TEMPLATEs but rather generic as far
as TEMPLATEs are concerned.

Regards,
--
Dimitri Fontaine 06 63 07 10 78
http://2ndQuadrant.fr PostgreSQL : Expertise, Formation et Support