Re: RFC: PostgreSQL Add-On Network

On Jan 8, 2010, at 1:35 AM, Dave Page wrote:

> I am saying that if the design won't ever work without requiring
> painful dependency installation that users will likely not want to
> bother with, then it is fundamentally broken. Better to write one
> system that can _eventually_ work everywhere, than one that works for
> some, and then another that works elsewhere.

This whole bit about Windows is a red herring. Perhaps I should not have phrased it the way I did WRT Windows. So I'm going to change it to:

> The PGAN client will make no other assumptions about how to build and install extensions, leaving such to the PostgreSQL core. To the extent that PGXS-powered `make` works on a given platform, the client will support it.

Discussing it with Andrew, that means it should work if you have mingw, and we might have to tweak it a bit to work with `src/tools/msvc`.

So the point is: the PGAN client (which is just one part of this project, after all), will *not* include a build system. It will use whatever build system is supported by the community. Right now that's PGXS. If core switches to something later, or provides binary builds for Windows, the client will be easily adapted to take advantage of it. No sweat.

The upshot is this: PGAN does *not* ignore Windows or any other platform. Rather, it relies on others to create the appropriate community-supported installers for all platforms. The issue of build systems and installers is not within its domain. Thus, I've also changed the FAQ to:

> * '''What about Windows?''' The PGAN client will always follow the lead of the PostgreSQL core on installing extensions. If support for installing extensions on Windows improves such that a compiler is no longer required, the PGAN client will be modified as appropriate to take advantage of it. This applies not specifically to Windows, but to the ability of the core intaller (or any future community-supported installer) to work on ''any'' platform.

Please let the Windows thread die now. PGAN doesn't ignore Windows; it ignores installer development.

Best,

David