Re: [CORE] Restore-reliability mode - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Geoff Winkless
Subject Re: [CORE] Restore-reliability mode
Date
Msg-id CAEzk6ffGP5ZyCj7QsnT4y5JAYr+b37L6STpQM_2sRd9DnWkp1w@mail.gmail.com
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In response to Re: [CORE] Restore-reliability mode  (Sehrope Sarkuni <sehrope@jackdb.com>)
Responses Re: [CORE] Restore-reliability mode  (Sehrope Sarkuni <sehrope@jackdb.com>)
Re: [CORE] Restore-reliability mode  (Jeff Janes <jeff.janes@gmail.com>)
List pgsql-hackers
On 6 June 2015 at 13:41, Sehrope Sarkuni <sehrope@jackdb.com> wrote:
On Sat, Jun 6, 2015 at 6:47 AM, Geoff Winkless <pgsqladmin@geoff.dj> wrote:
> To play devil's advocate for a moment, is there anyone who would genuinely be prepared to download
> and install an alpha release who would not already have downloaded one of the nightlies? I only ask
> because I assume that  releasing an alpha is not zero-developer-cost and I don't believe  that
> there's a large number of people who would be happy to install something that's described as being
> buggy and subject to change but are put off by having to type "configure" and "make".

I fit into that category and I would guess there would be others as
well. Having system packages available via an "apt-get install ..."
lowers the bar significantly to try things out. 

​But it also lowers the bar to the extent that you get the people who won't read the todo list and end up complaining about the things that everyone already knows about​.
 
It's much easier to work into dev/test setups if there are system
packages as it's just a config change to an existing script. Building
from source would require a whole new workflow that I don't have time
to incorporate.

​Really? You genuinely don't have time to paste, say:

mkdir -p ~/src/pgdevel
cd ~/src/pgdevel
tar xjf postgresql-snapshot.tar.bz2
​mkdir bld
cd bld
../postgresql-9.5devel/configure $(pg_config --configure | sed -e 's/\(pg\|postgresql[-\/]\)\(doc-\)\?9\.[0-9]*\(dev\)\?/\1\29.5dev/g')
make wor
​ld​
​make check
make world-install
​​

​and yet you think you have enough time to provide more than a "looks like it's working" report to the developers?​

(NB the sed for the pg_config line will probably need work, it looks like it should work on the two types of system I have here but I have to admit I changed the config line manually when I built it)

 
> Further, it seems to me that the number of people who won't roll their own who are useful as bug-finders is even smaller.

That's probably true but they definitely won't find any bugs if they
don't test at all.

If it's possible to have automated packaging, even for just a subset
of platforms, I think that'd be useful.

Well yes, automated packaging of the nightly build, that doesn't involve the developers having to stop what they're doing to write official alpha release docs or any of the other stuff that goes along with doing a release, would be zero-impact on development (assuming the developers didn't have to build or maintain the auto-packager) and therefore any return (however small) would make it worthwhile.

Fancy building (and maintaining) the auto-packaging system, and managing a mailing list for its users?

Geoff

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