On Thu, 2006-07-13 at 11:03 -0400, Jonah H. Harris wrote:
> On 7/13/06, Lukas Smith wrote:
> > However I do think that PostgreSQL is missing out in
> > getting new users aboard that are in the early stages
> > of evalutation and simply only consider features that
> > they get along with a default installation (mostly due
> > to lack of better knowledge about places like pgfoundry).
>
> This is my point exactly. As with many things, we keep skirting the
> real issue by going with an "improve the smaller component" approach
> such as "promote pgfoundry more". I have never seen this approach
> work, but maybe someone has an example of another OSS project that has
> successfully excluded major components like this?
Personally, I prefer the Gnome approach. Most components are developed
and bundled independently but once the code meets certain stability and
usability requirements the component is promoted to the standard website
with standard documentation, bug reporting, download locations, etc.
On PostgreSQL.org, aside from the "Downloads" tab it is very difficult
to find these items. PGFoundry does not attempt to differentiate between
the state of projects. Top downloads is the closest to this.
XML based docbook can easily suck in documentation from multiple remote
sources (when available -- substituted when not available) for a single
documentation build via XMLIncludes. This allows for PL/Java chapter in
the standard documentation set online.
PostgreSQL.org "Support" could pretty easily link to the various
locations for bug reports -- Bugzilla makes component selection a common
requirement.
A slight restructuring of the FTP tree should probably be made. It's
currently very easy to find the main pgsql, pgadmin and odbc components.
Finding pl/java (what the heck is that gborg or pgfoundry project?) is
pretty difficult.
The only real tricky part is defining what a plugin or addon application
such as pgadmin needs to be considered production ready. This will
relate to testing practices, documentation, code quality, ongoing
maintenance, and expected supported lifetime. For lifetime, if it was
released for Core 7.3 should still work with 7.3 today or old versions
should still receive security and bug fixes.
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