Re: [HACKERS] contrib vs. gborg/pgfoundry for replication solutions

[Joshua D. Drake]

Hello, I believe that one problem with the contrib is that in order to build most of the contrib modules you need the PostgreSQL source. That is silly. If I have PostgreSQL installed with all headers, I should be able to download a PostgreSQL project app (pgAdmin whatever) and just build it against PostgreSQL. Very few OSS projects are like that. If I want PHP I don't need Apache source, I just need the Apache development stuff (headers etc...). If we were to break out contrib so it was on its own, let people figure out their own build methods. You don't "have" to use autoconf (although it is a good idea). You don't NEED PostgreSQL source etc... Sincerely, Joshua D. Drake Marc G. Fournier wrote: On Wed, 21 Apr 2004, Rod Taylor wrote: We have the current issue of people not knowing that projects like pgadmin exist or where to find the jdbc drivers. Agreed ... but makign one big META package isn't going to fix that ... as someone else suggested, put a README file in the contrib directory that points ppl to projects.postgresql.org ... These basic components (and others a large segment uses that are well maintained) should go through a release cycle with the -core including the platform test/report phase and be prominently listed in the downloads area and documentation areas -- just as we do for PostgreSQL proper. *ack* ... now the beta cycle just quadrupled in length ... so we develop for 4 months, and beta for a year while we make sure everyone else's packages work with the -core? Most DBAs that I know will not upgrade based on a .0 release on a production system ... they will wait for at least a .1 release ... between .0 and .1 is when projects like PgAdmin should be doing their testing to make sure that they are good for the new major release ... Goto http://postgresql.org, now track down the jdbc drivers or how to use them. To a significant portion of our users this is more important than CREATE FUNCTION is and in 7.5 jdbc documentation will be much more difficult to find, but no less important than it used to be. Now, out of all of the PostgreSQL users, what % are using JDBC? What % are using ODBC? What percentage of those using JDBC are also using ODBC? What % of those using PgAdmin are also using ODBC? For that matter, how many ppl using JDBC only want to download the .jar file itself, and not the source code? % of Binary-Only PgAdmin users? ODBC driver? The point of projects.postgresql.org is that if someone *is* looking for an addon, they should be pointed to projects.postgresql.org ... if you try and merge everything into the -core distribution, you are either going to miss something that *someone* wants to use at some point, *or* one helluva large tar file to download ... ---- Marc G. Fournier Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org) Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yahoo!: yscrappy ICQ: 7615664 -- Command Prompt, Inc., home of Mammoth PostgreSQL - S/ODBC and S/JDBC Postgresql support, programming shared hosting and dedicated hosting. +1-503-667-4564 - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://www.commandprompt.com PostgreSQL Replicator -- production quality replication for PostgreSQL