Alvaro Herrera wrote:
> I don't understand why it would be "overkill". Are you saying people
> would complain because you installed a 25 kB executable that they might
> not want to use? Just for fun I checked /usr/bin and noticed that I
> have a "pandoc" executable, weighing 17 MB, that I have never used and I
> have no idea what is it for.
>
It's for converting between the various types of text-like markup, i.e.
reST, LaTex, Markdown, etc.
Anyway, just because the rest of the world has no standards anymore
doesn't mean we shouldn't. The changes Bruce has made recently have
gotten this tool to where its output is starting to be readable and
reliable. The sort of people who want to run this will certainly be
fine with installing contrib to do it, because they may want to have
things like pgbench too. There's really not enough demand for this to
pollute the default server install footprint with any overhead from this
tool, either in bytes or increased tool name squatting. And the fact
that it's still a little rough around the edges nudges away from the
standard server package too.
Install in contrib as pg_test_fsync and I think you'll achieve the
optimal subset of people who can be made happy here. Not having it
packaged at all before wasn't a big deal, because it was so hard to
collect good data from only developer-level people were doing it
anyway. Now that it is starting to be more useful in that role for less
experienced users, we need to make it easier for more people to run it,
to collect feedback toward further improving its quality.
--
Greg Smith 2ndQuadrant US greg@2ndQuadrant.com Baltimore, MD
PostgreSQL Training, Services, and 24x7 Support www.2ndQuadrant.us
"PostgreSQL 9.0 High Performance": http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/books
