Re: writing backend extensions using Visual Studio

On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 13:32:46 +0100, Dave Page <dpage(at)vale-housing(dot)co(dot)uk> wrote:
>
> Yeah - these used to be installed by 'make install-all-headers' iirc,
> however that has gone now. I can't see anything in /INSTALL or the docs
> on what to use instead other than the source tree (which doesn't ship
> with pgInstaller of course).
>
> So, a question to anyone who knows, do we really need to ship *all*
> headers with the installer, or is there a useful subset?

I'm too new to this whole area to provide anything like an
authoritative answer, but I can at least speak to what headers I'm
using:

$PGSRC/include/postgres.h // should be first file included in backend modules
$PGSRC/include/fmgr.h // required to define functions using version
1 calling conventions
$PGSRC/include/libpq/pqformat.h /// required to work with byteas

Clearly some of these #include a bunch of other files.
This selection is based on the postgresql documentation and some web surfing.

Maybe a good solution to this is to add an extra option in the
installer's development category to include header files for backend
development? That way most people (even those who do front-end
development) don't have to deal with having that whole include tree
installed, but those who want to do backend work can still get
everything required without doing their own build/source installation.

-greg