Re: PostgreSQL extension API? Documentation? - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Chapman Flack
Subject Re: PostgreSQL extension API? Documentation?
Date
Msg-id 56D1FE19.5060803@anastigmatix.net
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: PostgreSQL extension API? Documentation?  (Álvaro Hernández Tortosa <aht@8kdata.com>)
List pgsql-hackers
On 02/27/16 14:11, Álvaro Hernández Tortosa wrote:

>     Why would it be so much work? Creating a function list, and maybe
> documenting those, doesn't sound like a daunting task.
> 
>     I wouldn't mind volunteering for this work, but I guess I would need
> some help to understand and identify the candidate parts of the API.

I guess one daunting part is that the first approximation to "candidate
parts of the API" is something like "that which is useful to extensions"
and there are a lot of those, adding a really wide variety of capabilities,
and not all of their maintainers may be close followers of -hackers or
in a position to promptly answer if you asked "what are all the PostgreSQL
interfaces your extension relies on and why?".

My experience in working on PL/Java has been, sort of recurringly, that
I may appear on -hackers needing to advocate that PGDLLIMPORT be put on
some recently-added variable, or that there be some way to hook into
the extension dependency mechanism (to cite a couple recent examples)
and face initial questions on why such a need crops up in an extension.
So it takes some more explaining, and I don't think that reflects in
any way on the perspicacity of the -hackers readership; it's just that
any piece you're not personally immersed in is likely to have details
that won't have jumped out at you.

Such things probably lurk in the corners of most existing extensions,
of which there are a lot.

-Chap



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