Re: monolithic distro (was: Re: Fwd: Three weeks left until feature freeze) - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Josh Berkus
Subject Re: monolithic distro (was: Re: Fwd: Three weeks left until feature freeze)
Date
Msg-id 200607151319.33483.josh@agliodbs.com
Whole thread Raw
In response to monolithic distro (was: Re: Fwd: Three weeks left until feature freeze)  (Lukas Smith <smith@pooteeweet.org>)
Responses Re: monolithic distro
List pgsql-hackers
Lukas, all:

> So what I am suggesting is that PostgreSQL.org should push people
> towards the monolithic distro. The docs should contain everything that
> is in the monolithic distro. At conference we should say the name of the
> monolithic distro etc.

The issue I think you're ignoring is that maintaining such a distro and its 
build system for a reasonable number of platforms would require an enormous 
amount of work ... like, 3-4 full-time developers and at least a dozen 
part-time developers.   Compare the staff requirements for Debian, Red Hat or 
SuSE.  I can tell you from being the Bizgres admin for a few months that just 
trying to maintain/debug a build system that would do PostgreSQL + 
JasperReports + KETL + 4 optional modules on four platforms was easily 20-30 
hours of work, *per release*.  So this isn't something we can just vote into 
existance.

Second with "endorsing" or "certifying" projects on pgFoundry and elsewhere, 
who has the time?   To rate stuff as mature/not mature a committee of 
PostgreSQL people would have to be constantly reviewing projects, every 
single month, and probably getting into long political debates to boot.  If 
we do less, a repeat of the libpq++/libpqxx mess is inevitable.

It's very nice to throw these things out there and put them on the TODO 
list ... and if I had $100,000 in development money to throw at something, I 
might spend it that way ... but to propose them as *immediate* solutions to 
problems for 8.2 is fantasy.

-- 
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL @ Sun
San Francisco


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