Re: When to drop src/tools/msvc support

On Mon, 10 Apr 2023 at 18:34, Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 10, 2023 at 12:56 PM Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> > Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> > > However, if this is the direction we're going, we probably need to
> > > give pgsql-packagers a heads up ASAP, because anybody who is still
> > > relying on the MSVC system to build Windows binaries is presumably
> > > going to need some time to adjust. If we rip out the build system
> > > somebody is using a couple of weeks before beta, that might make it
> > > difficult for that person to get the beta out promptly. And I think
> > > there's probably more than just EDB who would be in that situation.
> >
> > Oh ... that's a good point. Is there anyone besides EDB shipping
> > MSVC-built executables? Would it even be practical to switch to
> > meson with a month-or-so notice? Seems kind of tight, and it's
> > not like the packagers volunteered to make this switch.
>
> I can't really speak to those questions with confidence.
>
> Perhaps instead of telling pgsql-packagers what we're doing, we could
> instead ask them if it would work for them if we did XYZ. Then we
> could use that information to inform our decision-making.

Projects other than the EDB installers use the MSVC build system - e.g.
pgAdmin uses it’s own builds of libpq and other tools (psql, pg_dump etc)
that are pretty heavily baked into a fully automated build system (even the
build servers and all their requirements are baked into Ansible).

Changing that lot would be non-trivial, though certainly possible, and I
suspect we’re not the only ones doing that sort of thing.

--
--
Dave Page
https://pgsnake.blogspot.com

EDB Postgres
https://www.enterprisedb.com