Re: windows resource files, bugs and what do we actually want

On Thu, Sep 1, 2022 at 11:22 PM Andres Freund <andres(at)anarazel(dot)de> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On 2022-09-01 22:34:07 +0200, Magnus Hagander wrote:
> > 4) We include the date, excluding 0 for some mysterious reason, in the
> > > version
> > > number. This seems to unnecessarily contribute to making the build
> not
> > > reproducible. Hails from long ago:
> > >
> > > commit 9af932075098bd3c143993386288a634d518713c
> > > Author: Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us>
> > > Date: 2004-12-19 02:16:31 +0000
> > >
> > > Add Win32 version stamps that increment each day for proper
> SYSTEM32
> > > DLL pginstaller installs.
> > >
> >
> > This is obviously far too long ago for me to *actually* remember, but I
> > think the idea was to make it work with snapshot installers. As they
> would
> > only replace the binary if the version number was newer, so for snapshots
> > it would be useful to have it always upgrade.
>
> Does any installer actually behave that way? Seems very doubtful.
>

I think the one we had back in the days was. But that one is *long* dead
now.

> 5) We have a PGFILEDESC for (nearly?) every binary/library. They largely
> > > don't
> > > seem more useful descriptions than the binary's name. Why don't we
> just
> > > drop most of them and just set the description as something like
> > > "PostgreSQL $name (binary|library)"? I doubt anybody ever looks into
> > > these
> > > details except to perhaps check the version number or such.
> > >
> >
> > At least back in the days, a lot of software inventory programs would
> > scrape this information into corporate-wide databases to keep track of
> what
> > was in use across enterprises. I have no idea if people still do that or
> if
> > it's all just checksums+databases now, but that was one reason back in
> the
> > days to put it there.
>
> Think that still happens, although I suspect they care more about the
> vendor
> etc than about the description. And would likely care more if we signed
> build products etc...
>

Yeah, agreed on both accounts.

And getting into signing them would certainly be a good thing, but that's a
much bigger thing...

--
Magnus Hagander
Me: https://www.hagander.net/ <http://www.hagander.net/>
Work: https://www.redpill-linpro.com/ <http://www.redpill-linpro.com/>g