I don't think we should include everything, and I belive that
"collapse" is debatable. The important part is how the distro itself
is managed. One can easily create a "core" distribution which
includes PL/Java, ODBC, JDBC, etc. All of them don't have to reside
in the same CVS tree, but they can be built and released together. I
know because I've done it... and it's not that difficult. The hard
part is actually deciding what to include and what not to.
And people already do this...
The Win32 installer
mammothpostgresql.org (which is 100% FOSS btw)
Ubuntu :)
So why put the load on the Core distro?
In general, we're talking about well established projects (PL/Java,
JDBC, ODBC, ...) with a great track record; not someone's personal
little proof-of-concept hack on pgfoundry.
Well define great track record? Of the three you mention, two of them
are debatable.
PL/java although from what I can tell is stable but it is still young.
ODBC is a constant problem, I didn't even realize what level of problem
ODBC could be until we wrote our own driver (READ: I am not blaming the
ODBC team)
Like I said, this discussion always seems to come up and we always go
back to saying "leave it to pgfoundry", "we'll promote pgfoundry",
"pgfoundry is the best place for it". Yet, I haven't really seen any
action to make pgfoundry any better or more well-known. I asked
before, is pgfoundry/gborg even mentioned in the documentation?
It is on the website and in the documentation. Albeit not as prominent
as it could be.
And to be frank, the amount of time any of us has spent on this thread
could have easily been used to improve the documentation on this
particular subject.
The right way to proceed is what was mentioned in another
message: work harder at educating packagers about which
non-core projects are worth including in their packages.
OK, but who is going to do this? It certainly doesn't sound like any
of us want to spend the time educating packagers as we're either
working on our own things or for companies that already do package
PostgreSQL.
Well honestly this seems like a no-op. The distributions that really
matter, are going to have packagers that know what is out there.
Ubuntu/Debian and FreeBSD come to mind first.
It just seems like we keep having lengthy recurring discussions that
seem to go nowhere. No solution is ever reached, we just keep the
status quo. Sure, risks either pay off or they don't, but it's just
as easy to die from stagnation as well.
Haha :) Welcome to FOSS development man :). It is 75% discussions that
go nowhere, 20% percent that get somewhere (noone actually knows where)
and 5% that gets done :)
I wish we could poll the actual end-users and see what their thoughts
are, because we're sort of thinking in a vacuum here (no pun
intended).
Well my users expect me to provide their tools, not the community. In
fact that is one of the most oft questions I get asked: "If we want to
help PostgreSQL, will you handle it for us".
I can readily accept being wrong; but every once in a while, we just
need a little innovation.
I don't think innovation is the word your looking for, progress maybe?
The problem is, progress is determined by arbitrary value to which
everyone has an opinion.
I mean heck... I still think we should introduce new features into back
branches as long as it doesn't require an initdb but most (including my
own developers) don't agree with me.
Sincerely,
Joshua D. Drake
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