Re: Is a modern build system acceptable for older platforms

Andres Freund <andres(at)anarazel(dot)de> writes:
> On 2018-05-01 12:19:28 -0400, Robert Haas wrote:
>> I found your brain dump an interesting read, and I have to say that it
>> leaves me rather uninspired about making a change. It sounds to me
>> like if we change, some things will be better and others will not be
>> as good. The good news is that if we decide to change, it sounds like
>> we won't be a lot worse off than we are today. The bad news is that
>> it doesn't sound like we'll be a lot better off, either.

> How is being able to build extensions on windows reasonably not an
> improvement?

That indeed would be an improvement, but maybe we could fix that specific
pain point without having to throw away twenty years worth of work?

The amount of accumulated knowledge we've got in the existing build system
is slightly staggering ... so I'm afraid that moving to a different one
would involve a lot of expensive re-invention of portability hacks.

Of course, blowing off support for any platform not released in the
last five years would cut down on the number of such hacks that we'd
need to reinvent. But that's not a tradeoff I especially like either.

regards, tom lane