On Wed, 2003-10-01 at 09:41, Marc G. Fournier wrote:
> On Wed, 1 Oct 2003, Robert Treat wrote:
>
> > Several linux distros already do this for many packages, and personally
> > I've always been surprised that, given postgresql's major release
> > upgrade issues, that no commercial company has stepped in to offer this
> > in the past. I think what Joshua is wondering is how much cooperation
> > would he get from the community if he was willing to donate these
> > efforts back into project.
>
> Using Linux/FreeBS/Insert OS Here as an example is like comparing apples
> to oranges ... take FreeBSD as an example, since I know it ... 5.x has had
> some *major* re-writes to the kernel done to it, getting rid of 'the Giant
> Lock' that SMP in 4.x uses ... those changes are not back-patchable, since
> then you'd have 5.x ... there are alot of changes to the 5.x kernel that
> rely on those changes, and are therefore not *easily* back-patchable ...
>
> Now, userland software is a totally different case, since they are rarely
> "tied" to the kernel itself ...
>
you missed my point. some distro's (red hat, suse, mandrake, etc..)
backpatch into their distributed packages separate of the packages
original source tree. this is great for folks who may want/need a new
change, but can't upgrade to latest source for some reason.
> Think of PostgreSQL as the kernel, not as the distro ... how many changes
> from one kernel release ae easily patched into an older one, without
> having to take alot of other baggage back with it ... ?
I wasn't thinking of PostgreSQL as a distro, but actually I think that
view is somewhat valid, since there are enough add ons to core that one
could modify without having to make huge changes.
As Tom pointed out, with the restriction of not being able to initdb,
you're probably pretty limited on what you can push back, but I think
there's still enough there that folks might want to look at it. (The
recent bugs in pltcl handling dropped columns come to mind, though maybe
Tom backpatched those? Cant recall)
Robert Treat
--
Build A Brighter Lamp :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL
