Re: Extensions User Design

Hi,

While backporting UUID stuff to 8.2 where I'll need it (I wish I could
have more impact on PostgreSQL upgrade schedules... who doesn't), I
faced a problem I didn't foresee, and that we maybe should think about.

http://cvs.pgfoundry.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/backports/

The idea in this backport is to have UUID as an extension to 8.2, which
was plain easy to do once you remember about adding the
PG_FUNCTION_INFO_V1() macro calls where they fit. Then there's the
uuid-ossp contrib stuff, already packaged as an extension, but with code
dependancy to the UUID provided functions (uuid_in, uuid_out).

What I ended up doing was duplicating code in order not to have to tweak
local_preload_libraries, so that uuid-ossp.so is self-contained.

Any advice or missing knowledge about loading modules which depends on
code from another module not already loaded in the backend is welcome :)

Josh Berkus <josh(at)agliodbs(dot)com> writes:
>> - dependancy graph solving and automatic installation, with depends,
>> recommends and suggest sections and with rules/setup to choose what to
>> pull in by default...
>
> Uh-huh. That'll be the day ...

So it seems we will have to teach the extension facility about loading
dependant extensions first when calling a function, which I guess we can
do as soon as we have the dependancies information in there?

(calling a function from 'MODULE_PATHNAME' will have the .so loaded, so
I guess than knowing it depends on another 'MODULE_PATHNAME' will
enable us to load those first)

Regards,
--
dim