Re: contrib function naming, and upgrade issues

Andrew Gierth <andrew(at)tao11(dot)riddles(dot)org(dot)uk> writes:
> "Tom" == Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> writes:
> Tom> I agree that this wasn't an amazingly good choice, but I think
> Tom> there's no real risk of name collisions because fmgr only
> Tom> searches for such names within the particular .so.

> Oh, if only life were so simple.

I think you are missing the point. There are certainly *potential*
problems from common function names in different .so's, but that does not
translate to evidence of *actual* problems in the Postgres environment.
In particular, I believe that we load .so's without adding their symbols
to those globally known by the linker --- at least on platforms where
that's possible. Not to mention that the universe of other .so's we
might load is not all that large. So I think the actual risks posed by
contrib/hstore are somewhere between minimal and nonexistent.

The past discussions we've had about developing a proper module facility
included ways to replace not-quite-compatible C functions. I think that
we can afford to let hstore go on as it is for another release or two,
in hopes that we'll have something that makes a fix for this transparent
to users. The risks don't look to me to be large enough to justify
imposing any upgrade pain on users.

regards, tom lane