Re: SuSE RPMs available for PostgreSQL 7.4 - Mailing list pgsql-general

On Wednesday 19 November 2003 02:11 pm, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> "Official" is in the eye of the beholder.  If it's on a SuSE CD, then it's
> official.  Everything else is just a series of coincidences.  You call
> yours "official", so the SuSE spec file refers to them as such.  But in
> fact, distributors build packages for their distributions and their
> customers, so making them similar to other spec files is just a secondary
> effect.

So Red Hat's use of the same is just a 'coincidence'.  Ok.

> > My effort has been expended not in directly building for every
> > distribution, but for providing a starting point that the distributions
> > can use and modify to their heart's content.  By keeping the PGDG set in
> > that role, the various distributions have a common starting point, so at
> > least postgresql works pretty much the same way across distributions.

> True, but you're under the misimpression that distributors always use your
> set and then add on their things.  But development also flows the other
> way.  So at any one point, one set is never a subset of the other.  So
> there is no hierarchy.

No, I'm not under any such misimpression.  And the set is 'our' set, not just
mine, since the group has thus far allowed the use of the postgresql.org
server for distribution.  I do not see the RPMs as just being 'mine' -- they
are the community's.  By having the PostgreSQL Global Development Group's
name, download site, and support behind this set means that they are
consisdered 'upstream' and the current feel, at least in the Red Hat niche,
is to use upstream whenever possible, and to refer bugs, patches, etc back
upstream whenever practical.  In this particular case, Red Hat employs
upstream developers (which is a common thing for Red Hat to do, as they
employ many upstream developers in many projects).  They do not empoy me; I
volunteer my time.

But, as I said in another post, if the community is of the consensus that
having the upstream RPM set is not a good thing, then I have no problem
letting the distributors do their own thing.  I just want to make things
easier for the users.

As to development flowing multiple directions, it's called cooperation.  Thus
far, most distributors have chosen to use things from our set, and I have
chosen to use things that were useful from their sets.  Would the same things
happen at the same level if our set did not exist?  This started in 1999
during the release cycle for Red Hat 6.1, when they chose to use the exact
same set I was working on at the time.  The exact set I had built was
distributed on the Red Hat CD for 6.1.  Was it built on others work?  Sure it
was.  Did it use good ideas from other people?  I am not a NIHilist, so it
certainly did.  Was it 'official' in any way?  Once I was allowed by PGDG to
upload it to the ftp.postgresql.org site, it became, in the view of the
PostgreSQL group, 'official' for the group.

Have I always done the best job?  Not necessarily.  Have the distributors'
RPMs differed from ours?  Yes, their needs and our needs differ.  Have they
synchronized to our set periodically?  Yes, they have.  Do they call our set
the 'official' set?  Yes, they do.

Why do you have a problem with this?

> The directory structure is a mirror of the SuSE FTP site.

On ftp.postgresql.org?  I'm only talking about ftp.postgresql.org.
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