On 8/16/16 2:52 AM, Gavin Flower wrote:
> In both cases, part of the motivation to change from C was to appeal to
> new developers - from what I remember of the discussions.
Moving this to -hackers. Original thread at [1].
tl;dr: A C++ port of Postgres has been created, and several folks on
general have commented that this makes it easier to work with the
Postgres codebase. This potentially attracts more developers to the
project. I hope we can find a way to pull these folks into the fold.
People in core have complained that we don't have enough hackers coming
in (which I agree with). Part of that is lack of familiarity with C.
I think we can all agree that a C++ fork of Postgres would be a huge
waste of time, so the question becomes should core postgres start
supporting C++.
Peter wrote a blog about this in 2013 that makes some good arguments
[2]; in particular "easing into" this by first officially supporting C++
compilation. I also like the idea of investigating Rust.
I realize there's little technical reason why we *need* C++ support. The
level if discipline applied to our codebase negates some of the benefits
of C++. But maintaining the discipline takes a lot of time and effort,
and makes it more difficult to attract new contributors. My hope is that
existing hackers can agree on a reasonable way forward and guide/assist
new folks that are interested in walking that path.
1:
https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/CABgyVxDBd3EvRdo-Rd6eo8QPEqV8=ShaU2SJfo16wfE0R-hXTA@mail.gmail.com
2: https://petereisentraut.blogspot.com/2013/05/moving-to-c.html
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