Re: [HACKERS] dynamic libraries

Folks,

this debate is becoming more and more a philosophic
discussion about "if it is right to force end users to use
-rpath or ld.so.conf". I think it's not the PostgreSQL
developers teams subject to make a decision about it. And
even if, I think we cannot make such a decision until release
schedule of 6.4.

PostgreSQL should be easily installable out of the box. On
systems where ld.so.conf is the defacto standard, forcing
-rpath will be IMHO a drawback against PostgreSQL (the user
already made his OS decision). If using a search path means a
loss of performance or security, systems where this is the
standard way have other problems than those coming with
PostgreSQL.

We can clearify in the installation instructions that using
ld.so.conf requires root permissions any time the library
interface changes or LD_LIBRARY_PATH can be used (if a non
privileged user wants to play around with it).

For 6.5 we could discuss if using ld.so.conf, LD_LIBRARY_PATH
or -rpath could become a configure option.

What we never should do is to be arrogant and say "PostgreSQL
MUST be installed using the ONE and ONLY correct way of
shared library usage". This would only become a pseudo
argument against PostgreSQL.

Let's all calm down and release. There are end users waiting
for the capabilities of 6.4. They don't care about how the
shared libs are used as long as it's easy to use them.

Jan

--

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