Re: Discontent with development process (was:Re: pgaccess - the discussion is over)

Lamar Owen <lamar(dot)owen(at)wgcr(dot)org> writes:
> Although this config file stuff is small potatoes compared to the
> Win32 stuff as recently discussed. And for that, please understand
> that most of the developers here consider Win32 an inferior server
> platform. In fact, Win32 _is_ an inferior server platform, at least
> in my opinion. But, if you want to do the work, and it doesn't break
> my non-Win32 server build, by all means go for it.

Note that "doesn't break non-Win32 builds" is not really the standard
that will get applied. Ongoing readability and maintainability of the
codebase is a very high priority in my eyes, and I think in the eyes
of most of the key developers. To the extent that Win32 support can
be added without hurting those goals, I have nothing against it.
I'll even put up with localized ugliness (see the BeOS support hacks
for an example of what I'd call localized ugliness). But I get unhappy
when there's airy handwaving about moving all static variables into some
global data structure, to take just one of the points that were under
discussion last week. That'd be a big maintainability penalty IMHO.

As for the more general point --- my recollection of that thread was
that mlw himself was more than a bit guilty of adopting a "my way or no
way" attitude; if he sees some pushback from the other developers maybe
he should consider the possibility that he's creating his own problem.
In general this development community is one of the most civilized I've
ever seen. I don't think it's that hard to get consensus on most
topics. The consensus isn't always the same as my personal opinion...
but that's the price of being part of a community.

regards, tom lane