Re: pg_upgrade code questions

On 5/13/10 10:14 AM, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> I am trying to think of this as a non-EnterpriseDB employee. If suppose
> Greenplum had given us a utility and they wanted it to work with their
> version of the database, what accommodation would we make for them? I
> agree on the documentation, but would we allow #ifdefs that were only
> used by them if there were only a few of them? Could we treat it as an
> operating system that none of us use? I don't think Greenplum would
> require us to keep support for their database, but they would prefer it,
> and it might encourage more contributions from them. Maybe we would
> just tell them to keep their own patches, but I figured I would ask
> specifically so we have a policy for next time.

My $0.021746:

If something is going to be included in /contrib, it should only include
code which relates to standard PostgreSQL. The independant pg_migrator
project can be a PG/EDBAS tool; the contrib module needs to be
vanilla-postgres only. If the donor of the code wants to keep the
specific fork support, then it should remain an independant project.

I'm not just referring to EDB here, or even just proprietary forks; even
open source forks (like PostgresXC or pgCluster) shouldn't have specific
code in /contrib. Within the limits of reasonableness, of course.

My argument isn't based on purity, but is rather based on:
(a) avoiding confusing the users, and
(b) avoiding bulking code with lots of ifdefs if we can avoid it, and
(c) fork release cycles are often different from pgsql-core, and EDB's
certainly is.

--
-- Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
http://www.pgexperts.com