Re: Microsoft releses Services for Unix

A "Native" Windows application is one that integrates well with the rest of the OS.. meaning it logs to the event log, runs as a service, supports performance monitor counters, responds to system shutdown and power management events, etc.. trying to support this stuff while running in Interix might well be impossible (you can't make Win32 calls from outside the Win32 subsystem can you?)

Wasn't the goal to get Postgres to work without Cygwin?

- Steve

-----Original Message-----
From: Merlin Moncure [mailto:merlin(dot)moncure(at)rcsonline(dot)com]
Sent: Miércoles, 14 de Enero de 2004 04:18 p.m.
To: Dave Page
Cc: pgsql-hackers-win32
Subject: Re: [pgsql-hackers-win32] Microsoft releses Services for Unix

Dave Page wrote:
> Steve Tibbett wrote:
> > Windows users will always prefer a Windows solution to a Unix
> > solution running on SFU... I'd say sticking with the original goal
> > of making a native Win32 version would be preferable.
>
> Plus I'll bet we couldn't distribute the required components ourselves
> and would thus require the user to download interix first.

Yes, but consider this:
1. from a windows developer's point of view, requiring Interix is no better or worse than requiring cygwin or mingw, except for maybe the size of the download/install.

2. Interix will be faster than any emulated I/O. sync() right now is very slow because there is no corresponding win32 API call. Interix implements this as an optimized kernel mode driver. That right there is reason enough for me.

3. Postgres no longer contains tons of extra code specifically to support windows.

4. 'Native' is a funny term. Interix runs at the same operations level as the win32 API (not above it, as cygwin, or application level emulation code). To a certain way of thinking, Interix applications are more native than win32 API code written to achieve the same purpose.

The soon to be released version 3.5 has greatly beefed up performance and support for threads. Unless I completely misunderstand things, getting a native win32 port for postgresql off the ground will boil down to downloading interix and hacking out a configure script...is this correct?

Merlin

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