Rewriting pg_upgrade (was Re: State of Beta 2)

On Sat, 2003-09-27 at 16:50, Nigel J. Andrews wrote:
> On Sat, 27 Sep 2003, Bruce Momjian wrote:
>
> > Tom Lane wrote:
> > > Bruce Momjian <pgman(at)candle(dot)pha(dot)pa(dot)us> writes:
> > > > With all the discussion and pg_upgrade, I saw no one offer to work on
> > > > it.
> > > > Does someone want to convert it to Perl? I think that would be a better
> > > > language than shell script for this purpose, and C is too low-level.
> > >
> > > The reason that it needs to be rewritten in C is that it needs access to
> > > internal stuff that the backend doesn't expose. (For example, the
> > > transaction counter, end-of-WAL pointer, etc.) I don't think Perl would
> > > offer anything except creating an entirely new dependency for Postgres.
> > > Also, C code would be easier to keep in sync with the backend code that
> > > accesses the same stuff.

Isn't Perl pretty ubiquitous on "Unix" now, though? Except maybe
Unixware....

> > True, but doing all that text manipulation is C is going to be very hard
> > to do and maintain.
>
> What about using embedded perl? I've never done it before but the mention of it
> in manpages has flashed past my eyes a couple of times so I know it's possible.
>
> Did the discuss decide on what was required for this. Last I noticed was that
> there was a distinction being made between system and user tables but I don't
> recall seeing a 'requirements' summary.

What about Perl w/ C modules? Of course, there's my favorite: Python.
It's got a good facility for writing C modules, and I think it's
better for writing s/w that needs to be constantly updated.

(I swear, it's just circumstance that this particular .signature
came up at this time, but it is apropos.)

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YODA: Code! Yes. A programmer's strength flows from code
maintainability. But beware of Perl. Terse syntax... more
than one way to do it...default variables. The dark side of code
maintainability are they. Easily they flow, quick to join you
when code you write. If once you start down the dark path,
forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will.