1) Just depend on DBD::Pg being installed. It's fairly common, after all. It'd be somewhat annoying that we'd often end up using a different version of libpq than what we're testing against. But in most cases that'd not be particularly problematic.
I advocated for this in the past, and still think it's the best option.
4) We develop a fairly minimal pure perl database driver, that doesn't depend on DBI. Include it somewhere as part of the test code, instead of src/interfaces, so it's clearer that it's not ment as an actual official driver.
Why not write a new language interpreter while we're at it, and maybe a compiler and runtime? :p
The community IMO wastes *so* much time on not-invented-here make-work and on jumping through hoops to avoid depending on anything newer than the late '90s. I'd rather not go deeper down that path. If someone on SunOS or SCO OpenServer or whatever doesn't want to install DBD::Pg, have the TAP tests just skip the tests on that platform and make it the platform owner's problem.
Craig, IIRC you'd thought about this before too?
Right. But IIRC Tom vetoed it on grounds of not wanting to expect buildfarm operators to install it, something like that.