Re: How much work is a native Windows application?

Jan Wieck wrote:
>
> Tom Lane wrote:
> > "Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy(at)hub(dot)org> writes:
> > > On Tue, 7 May 2002, Tom Lane wrote:
> > >> It'd be worth trying to understand cygwin issues in detail before we
> > >> sign up to do and support a native Windows port.
> >
> > > Actually, there are licensing issues involved ... we could never put a
> > > 'windows binary' up for anon-ftp, since to distribute it would require the
> > > cygwin.dll to be distributed, and to do that, there is a licensing cost
> > > ... of course, I guess we could require ppl to download cygwin seperately,
> > > install that, then install the binary over top of that ...
> >
> > <<itch>> And how much development time are we supposed to expend to
> > avoid that?
> >
> > Give me a technical case for avoiding Cygwin, and maybe I can get
> > excited about it. I'm not planning to lift a finger on the basis
> > of licensing though... after all, Windows users are accustomed to
> > paying for software, no?
>
> Nobody asked you to lift any of your fingers. A few people
> (including me) just see value in a native Windows port,
> kicking out the Cygwin requirement.
>
> I have the impression you never did use Cygwin. I did, thanks
> but no thanks.

I have used the cygwin version too. It is a waste of time. No Windows user will
ever accept it. No windows-only user is going to use the cygwin tools. From a
production stand point, would anyone reading this trust their data to
PostgreSQL running on cygwin? Think about it, if you wouldn't, why would anyone
else.

I think, and I know people are probably sick of me spouting opinions, that if
you want a Windows presence for PostgreSQL, then we should write a real Win32
version.

If the global/static variables which are initialized by the postmaster are
moved to a structure, we can should be able to remove the fork() requirement
and port to a Win32 native system.