Developer's Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for PostgreSQL
- Last updated: Tue Dec 4 01:14:35 EST 2001
+ Last updated: Tue Dec 4 01:20:03 EST 2001
Current maintainer: Bruce Momjian (pgman@candle.pha.pa.us)
15) How are RPM's packaged?
This was written by Lamar Owen:
-2001-05-03
-
-As to how the RPMs are built -- to answer that question sanely requires
-me to know how much experience you have with the whole RPM paradigm.
-'How is the RPM built?' is a multifaceted question. The obvious simple
-answer is that I maintain:
- 1.) A set of patches to make certain portions of the source
- tree 'behave' in the different environment of the RPMset;
- 2.) The initscript;
- 3.) Any other ancilliary scripts and files;
- 4.) A README.rpm-dist document that tries to adequately document
- both the differences between the RPM build and the WHY of the
- differences, as well as useful RPM environment operations
- (like, using syslog, upgrading, getting postmaster to
- start at OS boot, etc);
- 5.) The spec file that throws it all together. This is not a
- trivial undertaking in a package of this size.
-
-I then download and build on as many different canonical distributions
-as I can -- currently I am able to build on Red Hat 6.2, 7.0, and 7.1 on
-my personal hardware. Occasionally I receive opportunity from certain
-commercial enterprises such as Great Bridge and PostgreSQL, Inc. to
-build on other distributions.
-
-I test the build by installing the resulting packages and running the
-regression tests. Once the build passes these tests, I upload to the
-postgresql.org ftp server and make a release announcement. I am also
-responsible for maintaining the RPM download area on the ftp site.
-
-You'll notice I said 'canonical' distributions above. That simply means
-that the machine is as stock 'out of the box' as practical -- that is,
-everything (except select few programs) on these boxen are installed by
-RPM; only official Red Hat released RPMs are used (except in unusual
-circumstances involving software that will not alter the build -- for
-example, installing a newer non-RedHat version of the Dia diagramming
-package is OK -- installing Python 2.1 on the box that has Python 1.5.2
-installed is not, as that alters the PostgreSQL build). The RPM as
-uploaded is built to as close to out-of-the-box pristine as is
-possible. Only the standard released 'official to that release'
-compiler is used -- and only the standard official kernel is used as
-well.
-
-For a time I built on Mandrake for RedHat consumption -- no more.
-Nonstandard RPM building systems are worse than useless. Which is not
-to say that Mandrake is useless! By no means is Mandrake useless --
-unless you are building Red Hat RPMs -- and Red Hat is useless if you're
-trying to build Mandrake or SuSE RPMs, for that matter. But I would be
-foolish to use 'Lamar Owen's Super Special RPM Blend Distro 0.1.2' to
-build for public consumption! :-)
-
-I _do_ attempt to make the _source_ RPM compatible with as many
-distributions as possible -- however, since I have limited resources (as
-a volunteer RPM maintainer) I am limited as to the amount of testing
-said build will get on other distributions, architectures, or systems.
-
-And, while I understand people's desire to immediately upgrade to the
-newest version, realize that I do this as a side interest -- I have a
-regular, full-time job as a broadcast
-engineer/webmaster/sysadmin/Technical Director which occasionally
-prevents me from making timely RPM releases. This happened during the
-early part of the 7.1 beta cycle -- but I believe I was pretty much on
-the ball for the Release Candidates and the final release.
-
-I am working towards a more open RPM distribution -- I would dearly love
-to more fully document the process and put everything into CVS -- once I
-figure out how I want to represent things such as the spec file in a CVS
-form. It makes no sense to maintain a changelog, for instance, in the
-spec file in CVS when CVS does a better job of changelogs -- I will need
-to write a tool to generate a real spec file from a CVS spec-source file
-that would add version numbers, changelog entries, etc to the result
-before building the RPM. IOW, I need to rethink the process -- and then
-go through the motions of putting my long RPM history into CVS one
-version at a time so that version history information isn't lost.
-
-As to why all these files aren't part of the source tree, well, unless
-there was a large cry for it to happen, I don't believe it should.
-PostgreSQL is very platform-agnostic -- and I like that. Including the
-RPM stuff as part of the Official Tarball (TM) would, IMHO, slant that
-agnostic stance in a negative way. But maybe I'm too sensitive to
-that. I'm not opposed to doing that if that is the consensus of the
-core group -- and that would be a sneaky way to get the stuff into CVS
-:-). But if the core group isn't thrilled with the idea (and my
-instinct says they're not likely to be), I am opposed to the idea -- not
-to keep the stuff to myself, but to not hinder the platform-neutral
-stance. IMHO, of course.
-
-Of course, there are many projects that DO include all the files
-necessary to build RPMs from their Official Tarball (TM).
-
+
+ 2001-05-03
+
+ As to how the RPMs are built -- to answer that question sanely
+ requires me to know how much experience you have with the whole RPM
+ paradigm. 'How is the RPM built?' is a multifaceted question. The
+ obvious simple answer is that I maintain:
+
+ 1.) A set of patches to make certain portions of the source tree
+ 'behave' in the different environment of the RPMset;
+
+ 2.) The initscript;
+
+ 3.) Any other ancilliary scripts and files;
+
+ 4.) A README.rpm-dist document that tries to adequately document both
+ the differences between the RPM build and the WHY of the differences,
+ as well as useful RPM environment operations (like, using syslog,
+ upgrading, getting postmaster to start at OS boot, etc);
+
+ 5.) The spec file that throws it all together. This is not a trivial
+ undertaking in a package of this size.
+
+ I then download and build on as many different canonical distributions
+ as I can -- currently I am able to build on Red Hat 6.2, 7.0, and 7.1
+ on my personal hardware. Occasionally I receive opportunity from
+ certain commercial enterprises such as Great Bridge and PostgreSQL,
+ Inc. to build on other distributions.
+
+ I test the build by installing the resulting packages and running the
+ regression tests. Once the build passes these tests, I upload to the
+ postgresql.org ftp server and make a release announcement. I am also
+ responsible for maintaining the RPM download area on the ftp site.
+
+ You'll notice I said 'canonical' distributions above. That simply
+ means that the machine is as stock 'out of the box' as practical --
+ that is, everything (except select few programs) on these boxen are
+ installed by RPM; only official Red Hat released RPMs are used (except
+ in unusual circumstances involving software that will not alter the
+ build -- for example, installing a newer non-RedHat version of the Dia
+ diagramming package is OK -- installing Python 2.1 on the box that has
+ Python 1.5.2 installed is not, as that alters the PostgreSQL build).
+ The RPM as uploaded is built to as close to out-of-the-box pristine as
+ is possible. Only the standard released 'official to that release'
+ compiler is used -- and only the standard official kernel is used as
+ well.
+
+ For a time I built on Mandrake for RedHat consumption -- no more.
+ Nonstandard RPM building systems are worse than useless. Which is not
+ to say that Mandrake is useless! By no means is Mandrake useless --
+ unless you are building Red Hat RPMs -- and Red Hat is useless if
+ you're trying to build Mandrake or SuSE RPMs, for that matter. But I
+ would be foolish to use 'Lamar Owen's Super Special RPM Blend Distro
+ 0.1.2' to build for public consumption! :-)
+
+ I _do_ attempt to make the _source_ RPM compatible with as many
+ distributions as possible -- however, since I have limited resources
+ (as a volunteer RPM maintainer) I am limited as to the amount of
+ testing said build will get on other distributions, architectures, or
+ systems.
+
+ And, while I understand people's desire to immediately upgrade to the
+ newest version, realize that I do this as a side interest -- I have a
+ regular, full-time job as a broadcast
+ engineer/webmaster/sysadmin/Technical Director which occasionally
+ prevents me from making timely RPM releases. This happened during the
+ early part of the 7.1 beta cycle -- but I believe I was pretty much on
+ the ball for the Release Candidates and the final release.
+
+ I am working towards a more open RPM distribution -- I would dearly
+ love to more fully document the process and put everything into CVS --
+ once I figure out how I want to represent things such as the spec file
+ in a CVS form. It makes no sense to maintain a changelog, for
+ instance, in the spec file in CVS when CVS does a better job of
+ changelogs -- I will need to write a tool to generate a real spec file
+ from a CVS spec-source file that would add version numbers, changelog
+ entries, etc to the result before building the RPM. IOW, I need to
+ rethink the process -- and then go through the motions of putting my
+ long RPM history into CVS one version at a time so that version
+ history information isn't lost.
+
+ As to why all these files aren't part of the source tree, well, unless
+ there was a large cry for it to happen, I don't believe it should.
+ PostgreSQL is very platform-agnostic -- and I like that. Including the
+ RPM stuff as part of the Official Tarball (TM) would, IMHO, slant that
+ agnostic stance in a negative way. But maybe I'm too sensitive to
+ that. I'm not opposed to doing that if that is the consensus of the
+ core group -- and that would be a sneaky way to get the stuff into CVS
+ :-). But if the core group isn't thrilled with the idea (and my
+ instinct says they're not likely to be), I am opposed to the idea --
+ not to keep the stuff to myself, but to not hinder the
+ platform-neutral stance. IMHO, of course.
+
+ Of course, there are many projects that DO include all the files
+ necessary to build RPMs from their Official Tarball (TM).
+
16) How are CVS branches managed?
This was written by Tom Lane:
-2001-05-07
-
-If you just do basic "cvs checkout", "cvs update", "cvs commit", then
-you'll always be dealing with the HEAD version of the files in CVS.
-That's what you want for development, but if you need to patch past
-stable releases then you have to be able to access and update the
-"branch" portions of our CVS repository. We normally fork off a branch
-for a stable release just before starting the development cycle for the
-next release.
-
-The first thing you have to know is the branch name for the branch you
-are interested in getting at. To do this, look at some long-lived file,
-say the top-level HISTORY file, with "cvs status -v" to see what the
-branch names are. (Thanks to Ian Lance Taylor for pointing out that
-this is the easiest way to do it.) Typical branch names are:
-
+
+ 2001-05-07
+
+ If you just do basic "cvs checkout", "cvs update", "cvs commit", then
+ you'll always be dealing with the HEAD version of the files in CVS.
+ That's what you want for development, but if you need to patch past
+ stable releases then you have to be able to access and update the
+ "branch" portions of our CVS repository. We normally fork off a branch
+ for a stable release just before starting the development cycle for
+ the next release.
+
+ The first thing you have to know is the branch name for the branch you
+ are interested in getting at. To do this, look at some long-lived
+ file, say the top-level HISTORY file, with "cvs status -v" to see what
+ the branch names are. (Thanks to Ian Lance Taylor for pointing out
+ that this is the easiest way to do it.) Typical branch names are:
REL7_1_STABLE
REL7_0_PATCHES
REL6_5_PATCHES
-OK, so how do you do work on a branch? By far the best way is to create
-a separate checkout tree for the branch and do your work in that. Not
-only is that the easiest way to deal with CVS, but you really need to
-have the whole past tree available anyway to test your work. (And you
-*better* test your work. Never forget that dot-releases tend to go out
-with very little beta testing --- so whenever you commit an update to a
-stable branch, you'd better be doubly sure that it's correct.)
-
-Normally, to checkout the head branch, you just cd to the place you
-want to contain the toplevel "pgsql" directory and say
-
+ OK, so how do you do work on a branch? By far the best way is to
+ create a separate checkout tree for the branch and do your work in
+ that. Not only is that the easiest way to deal with CVS, but you
+ really need to have the whole past tree available anyway to test your
+ work. (And you *better* test your work. Never forget that dot-releases
+ tend to go out with very little beta testing --- so whenever you
+ commit an update to a stable branch, you'd better be doubly sure that
+ it's correct.)
+
+ Normally, to checkout the head branch, you just cd to the place you
+ want to contain the toplevel "pgsql" directory and say
cvs ... checkout pgsql
-To get a past branch, you cd to whereever you want it and say
-
+ To get a past branch, you cd to whereever you want it and say
cvs ... checkout -r BRANCHNAME pgsql
-For example, just a couple days ago I did
-
+ For example, just a couple days ago I did
mkdir ~postgres/REL7_1
cd ~postgres/REL7_1
cvs ... checkout -r REL7_1_STABLE pgsql
-and now I have a maintenance copy of 7.1.*.
-
-When you've done a checkout in this way, the branch name is "sticky":
-CVS automatically knows that this directory tree is for the branch,
-and whenever you do "cvs update" or "cvs commit" in this tree, you'll
-fetch or store the latest version in the branch, not the head version.
-Easy as can be.
-
-So, if you have a patch that needs to apply to both the head and a
-recent stable branch, you have to make the edits and do the commit
-twice, once in your development tree and once in your stable branch
-tree. This is kind of a pain, which is why we don't normally fork
-the tree right away after a major release --- we wait for a dot-release
-or two, so that we won't have to double-patch the first wave of fixes.
-
+ and now I have a maintenance copy of 7.1.*.
+
+ When you've done a checkout in this way, the branch name is "sticky":
+ CVS automatically knows that this directory tree is for the branch,
+ and whenever you do "cvs update" or "cvs commit" in this tree, you'll
+ fetch or store the latest version in the branch, not the head version.
+ Easy as can be.
+
+ So, if you have a patch that needs to apply to both the head and a
+ recent stable branch, you have to make the edits and do the commit
+ twice, once in your development tree and once in your stable branch
+ tree. This is kind of a pain, which is why we don't normally fork the
+ tree right away after a major release --- we wait for a dot-release or
+ two, so that we won't have to double-patch the first wave of fixes.
+
17) How go I get involved in PostgreSQL development?
This was written by Lamar Owen:
-2001-06-22
-
-> If someone was interested in joining the development team, where would
-> they...
-> - Find a description of the open source development process used by the
-> PostgreSQL team.
-
-Read HACKERS for six months (or a full release cycle, whichever is longer).
-Really. HACKERS _is_the process. The process is not well documented (AFAIK
--- it may be somewhere that I am not aware of) -- and it changes continually.
-
-> - Find the development environment (OS, system, compilers, etc)
-> required to develop code.
-
-Developers Corner on the website
-has links to this information. The distribution tarball itself
-includes all the extra tools and documents that go beyond a good
-Unix-like development environment. In general, a modern unix with a
-modern gcc, GNU make or equivalent, autoconf (of a particular version),
-and good working knowledge of those tools are required.
-
-> - Find an area or two that needs some support.
-
-The TODO list.
-
-You've made the first step, by finding and subscribing to HACKERS. Once you
-find an area to look at in the TODO, and have read the documentation on the
-internals, etc, then you check out a current CVS,write what you are going to
-write (keeping your CVS checkout up to date in the process), and make up a
-patch (as a context diff only) and send to the PATCHES list, prefereably.
-
-Discussion on the patch typically happens here. If the patch adds a major
-feature, it would be a good idea to talk about it first on the HACKERS list,
-in order to increase the chances of it being accepted, as well as toavoid
-duplication of effort. Note that experienced developers with a proven track
-record usually get the big jobs -- for more than one reason. Also note that
-PostgreSQL is highly portable -- nonportable code will likely be dismissed
-out of hand.
-
-Once your contributions get accepted, things move from there. Typically, you
-would be added as a developer on the list on the website when one of the
-other developers recommends it. Membership on the steering committee is by
-invitation only, by the other steering committee members, from what I have
-gathered watching froma distance.
-
-I make these statements from having watched the process for over two years.
-
-To see a good example of how one goes about this, search the archives for the
-name 'Tom Lane' and see what his first post consisted of, and where he took
-things. In particular, note that this hasn't been _that_ long ago -- and his
-bugfixing and general deep knowledge with this codebase is legendary. Take a
-few days to read after him. And pay special attention to both the sheer
-quantity as well as the painstaking quality of his work. Both are in high
-demand.
+
+ 2001-06-22
+
+ > If someone was interested in joining the development team, where
+ would
+ > they...
+ > - Find a description of the open source development process used by
+ the
+ > PostgreSQL team.
+
+ Read HACKERS for six months (or a full release cycle, whichever is
+ longer). Really. HACKERS _is_the process. The process is not well
+ documented (AFAIK -- it may be somewhere that I am not aware of) --
+ and it changes continually.
+
+ > - Find the development environment (OS, system, compilers, etc)
+ > required to develop code.
+
+ Developers Corner on the website has links to this information. The
+ distribution tarball itself includes all the extra tools and documents
+ that go beyond a good Unix-like development environment. In general, a
+ modern unix with a modern gcc, GNU make or equivalent, autoconf (of a
+ particular version), and good working knowledge of those tools are
+ required.
+
+ > - Find an area or two that needs some support.
+
+ The TODO list.
+
+ You've made the first step, by finding and subscribing to HACKERS.
+ Once you find an area to look at in the TODO, and have read the
+ documentation on the internals, etc, then you check out a current
+ CVS,write what you are going to write (keeping your CVS checkout up to
+ date in the process), and make up a patch (as a context diff only) and
+ send to the PATCHES list, prefereably.
+
+ Discussion on the patch typically happens here. If the patch adds a
+ major feature, it would be a good idea to talk about it first on the
+ HACKERS list, in order to increase the chances of it being accepted,
+ as well as toavoid duplication of effort. Note that experienced
+ developers with a proven track record usually get the big jobs -- for
+ more than one reason. Also note that PostgreSQL is highly portable --
+ nonportable code will likely be dismissed out of hand.
+
+ Once your contributions get accepted, things move from there.
+ Typically, you would be added as a developer on the list on the
+ website when one of the other developers recommends it. Membership on
+ the steering committee is by invitation only, by the other steering
+ committee members, from what I have gathered watching froma distance.
+
+ I make these statements from having watched the process for over two
+ years.
+
+ To see a good example of how one goes about this, search the archives
+ for the name 'Tom Lane' and see what his first post consisted of, and
+ where he took things. In particular, note that this hasn't been _that_
+ long ago -- and his bugfixing and general deep knowledge with this
+ codebase is legendary. Take a few days to read after him. And pay
+ special attention to both the sheer quantity as well as the
+ painstaking quality of his work. Both are in high demand.
<H1>Developer's Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for
PostgreSQL</H1>
- <P>Last updated: Tue Dec 4 01:20:03 EST 2001</P>
+ <P>Last updated: Tue Dec 4 01:20:03 EST 2001</P>
-
<P>Current maintainer: Bruce Momjian (<A href=
"mailto:pgman@candle.pha.pa.us">pgman@candle.pha.pa.us</A>)<BR>
</P>
<A href="#15">15</A>) How are RPM's packaged?<BR>
<A href="#16">16</A>) How are CVS branches handled?<BR>
<A href="#17">17</A>) How do I get involved in PostgreSQL
- development?<BR>
+ development?<BR>
<BR>
<HR>
<H3><A name="15">15</A>) How are RPM's packaged?</H3>
<P>This was written by Lamar Owen:</P>
-<P>2001-05-03
-
-<P>As to how the RPMs are built -- to answer that question sanely requires
-me to know how much experience you have with the whole RPM paradigm.
-'How is the RPM built?' is a multifaceted question. The obvious simple
-answer is that I maintain:
-
-<P>
- 1.) A set of patches to make certain portions of the source
- tree 'behave' in the different environment of the RPMset;
-<P> 2.) The initscript;
-<P> 3.) Any other ancilliary scripts and files;
-<P> 4.) A README.rpm-dist document that tries to adequately document
- both the differences between the RPM build and the WHY of the
- differences, as well as useful RPM environment operations
- (like, using syslog, upgrading, getting postmaster to
- start at OS boot, etc);
-<P> 5.) The spec file that throws it all together. This is not a
- trivial undertaking in a package of this size.
-
-<P>I then download and build on as many different canonical distributions
-as I can -- currently I am able to build on Red Hat 6.2, 7.0, and 7.1 on
-my personal hardware. Occasionally I receive opportunity from certain
-commercial enterprises such as Great Bridge and PostgreSQL, Inc. to
-build on other distributions.
-
-<P>I test the build by installing the resulting packages and running the
-regression tests. Once the build passes these tests, I upload to the
-postgresql.org ftp server and make a release announcement. I am also
-responsible for maintaining the RPM download area on the ftp site.
-
-<P>You'll notice I said 'canonical' distributions above. That simply means
-that the machine is as stock 'out of the box' as practical -- that is,
-everything (except select few programs) on these boxen are installed by
-RPM; only official Red Hat released RPMs are used (except in unusual
-circumstances involving software that will not alter the build -- for
-example, installing a newer non-RedHat version of the Dia diagramming
-package is OK -- installing Python 2.1 on the box that has Python 1.5.2
-installed is not, as that alters the PostgreSQL build). The RPM as
-uploaded is built to as close to out-of-the-box pristine as is
-possible. Only the standard released 'official to that release'
-compiler is used -- and only the standard official kernel is used as
-well.
-
-<P>For a time I built on Mandrake for RedHat consumption -- no more.
-Nonstandard RPM building systems are worse than useless. Which is not
-to say that Mandrake is useless! By no means is Mandrake useless --
-unless you are building Red Hat RPMs -- and Red Hat is useless if you're
-trying to build Mandrake or SuSE RPMs, for that matter. But I would be
-foolish to use 'Lamar Owen's Super Special RPM Blend Distro 0.1.2' to
-build for public consumption! :-)
-
-<P>I _do_ attempt to make the _source_ RPM compatible with as many
-distributions as possible -- however, since I have limited resources (as
-a volunteer RPM maintainer) I am limited as to the amount of testing
-said build will get on other distributions, architectures, or systems.
-
-<P>And, while I understand people's desire to immediately upgrade to the
-newest version, realize that I do this as a side interest -- I have a
-regular, full-time job as a broadcast
-engineer/webmaster/sysadmin/Technical Director which occasionally
-prevents me from making timely RPM releases. This happened during the
-early part of the 7.1 beta cycle -- but I believe I was pretty much on
-the ball for the Release Candidates and the final release.
-
-<P>I am working towards a more open RPM distribution -- I would dearly love
-to more fully document the process and put everything into CVS -- once I
-figure out how I want to represent things such as the spec file in a CVS
-form. It makes no sense to maintain a changelog, for instance, in the
-spec file in CVS when CVS does a better job of changelogs -- I will need
-to write a tool to generate a real spec file from a CVS spec-source file
-that would add version numbers, changelog entries, etc to the result
-before building the RPM. IOW, I need to rethink the process -- and then
-go through the motions of putting my long RPM history into CVS one
-version at a time so that version history information isn't lost.
-
-<P>As to why all these files aren't part of the source tree, well, unless
-there was a large cry for it to happen, I don't believe it should.
-PostgreSQL is very platform-agnostic -- and I like that. Including the
-RPM stuff as part of the Official Tarball (TM) would, IMHO, slant that
-agnostic stance in a negative way. But maybe I'm too sensitive to
-that. I'm not opposed to doing that if that is the consensus of the
-core group -- and that would be a sneaky way to get the stuff into CVS
-:-). But if the core group isn't thrilled with the idea (and my
-instinct says they're not likely to be), I am opposed to the idea -- not
-to keep the stuff to myself, but to not hinder the platform-neutral
-stance. IMHO, of course.
-
-<P>Of course, there are many projects that DO include all the files
-necessary to build RPMs from their Official Tarball (TM).
+
+ <P>2001-05-03</P>
+
+ <P>As to how the RPMs are built -- to answer that question sanely
+ requires me to know how much experience you have with the whole RPM
+ paradigm. 'How is the RPM built?' is a multifaceted question. The
+ obvious simple answer is that I maintain:</P>
+
+ <P>1.) A set of patches to make certain portions of the source tree
+ 'behave' in the different environment of the RPMset;</P>
+
+ <P>2.) The initscript;</P>
+
+ <P>3.) Any other ancilliary scripts and files;</P>
+
+ <P>4.) A README.rpm-dist document that tries to adequately document
+ both the differences between the RPM build and the WHY of the
+ differences, as well as useful RPM environment operations (like,
+ using syslog, upgrading, getting postmaster to start at OS boot,
+ etc);</P>
+
+ <P>5.) The spec file that throws it all together. This is not a
+ trivial undertaking in a package of this size.</P>
+
+ <P>I then download and build on as many different canonical
+ distributions as I can -- currently I am able to build on Red Hat
+ 6.2, 7.0, and 7.1 on my personal hardware. Occasionally I receive
+ opportunity from certain commercial enterprises such as Great
+ Bridge and PostgreSQL, Inc. to build on other distributions.</P>
+
+ <P>I test the build by installing the resulting packages and
+ running the regression tests. Once the build passes these tests, I
+ upload to the postgresql.org ftp server and make a release
+ announcement. I am also responsible for maintaining the RPM
+ download area on the ftp site.</P>
+
+ <P>You'll notice I said 'canonical' distributions above. That
+ simply means that the machine is as stock 'out of the box' as
+ practical -- that is, everything (except select few programs) on
+ these boxen are installed by RPM; only official Red Hat released
+ RPMs are used (except in unusual circumstances involving software
+ that will not alter the build -- for example, installing a newer
+ non-RedHat version of the Dia diagramming package is OK --
+ installing Python 2.1 on the box that has Python 1.5.2 installed is
+ not, as that alters the PostgreSQL build). The RPM as uploaded is
+ built to as close to out-of-the-box pristine as is possible. Only
+ the standard released 'official to that release' compiler is used
+ -- and only the standard official kernel is used as well.</P>
+
+ <P>For a time I built on Mandrake for RedHat consumption -- no
+ more. Nonstandard RPM building systems are worse than useless.
+ Which is not to say that Mandrake is useless! By no means is
+ Mandrake useless -- unless you are building Red Hat RPMs -- and Red
+ Hat is useless if you're trying to build Mandrake or SuSE RPMs, for
+ that matter. But I would be foolish to use 'Lamar Owen's Super
+ Special RPM Blend Distro 0.1.2' to build for public consumption!
+ :-)</P>
+
+ <P>I _do_ attempt to make the _source_ RPM compatible with as many
+ distributions as possible -- however, since I have limited
+ resources (as a volunteer RPM maintainer) I am limited as to the
+ amount of testing said build will get on other distributions,
+ architectures, or systems.</P>
+
+ <P>And, while I understand people's desire to immediately upgrade
+ to the newest version, realize that I do this as a side interest --
+ I have a regular, full-time job as a broadcast
+ engineer/webmaster/sysadmin/Technical Director which occasionally
+ prevents me from making timely RPM releases. This happened during
+ the early part of the 7.1 beta cycle -- but I believe I was pretty
+ much on the ball for the Release Candidates and the final
+ release.</P>
+
+ <P>I am working towards a more open RPM distribution -- I would
+ dearly love to more fully document the process and put everything
+ into CVS -- once I figure out how I want to represent things such
+ as the spec file in a CVS form. It makes no sense to maintain a
+ changelog, for instance, in the spec file in CVS when CVS does a
+ better job of changelogs -- I will need to write a tool to generate
+ a real spec file from a CVS spec-source file that would add version
+ numbers, changelog entries, etc to the result before building the
+ RPM. IOW, I need to rethink the process -- and then go through the
+ motions of putting my long RPM history into CVS one version at a
+ time so that version history information isn't lost.</P>
+
+ <P>As to why all these files aren't part of the source tree, well,
+ unless there was a large cry for it to happen, I don't believe it
+ should. PostgreSQL is very platform-agnostic -- and I like that.
+ Including the RPM stuff as part of the Official Tarball (TM) would,
+ IMHO, slant that agnostic stance in a negative way. But maybe I'm
+ too sensitive to that. I'm not opposed to doing that if that is the
+ consensus of the core group -- and that would be a sneaky way to
+ get the stuff into CVS :-). But if the core group isn't thrilled
+ with the idea (and my instinct says they're not likely to be), I am
+ opposed to the idea -- not to keep the stuff to myself, but to not
+ hinder the platform-neutral stance. IMHO, of course.</P>
+
+ <P>Of course, there are many projects that DO include all the files
+ necessary to build RPMs from their Official Tarball (TM).</P>
<H3><A name="16">16</A>) How are CVS branches managed?</H3>
<P>This was written by Tom Lane:</P>
-<P>
-2001-05-07
-
-<P>If you just do basic "cvs checkout", "cvs update", "cvs commit", then
-you'll always be dealing with the HEAD version of the files in CVS.
-That's what you want for development, but if you need to patch past
-stable releases then you have to be able to access and update the
-"branch" portions of our CVS repository. We normally fork off a branch
-for a stable release just before starting the development cycle for the
-next release.
-
-<P>The first thing you have to know is the branch name for the branch you
-are interested in getting at. To do this, look at some long-lived file,
-say the top-level HISTORY file, with "cvs status -v" to see what the
-branch names are. (Thanks to Ian Lance Taylor for pointing out that
-this is the easiest way to do it.) Typical branch names are:
+ <P>2001-05-07</P>
+
+ <P>If you just do basic "cvs checkout", "cvs update", "cvs commit",
+ then you'll always be dealing with the HEAD version of the files in
+ CVS. That's what you want for development, but if you need to patch
+ past stable releases then you have to be able to access and update
+ the "branch" portions of our CVS repository. We normally fork off a
+ branch for a stable release just before starting the development
+ cycle for the next release.</P>
+
+ <P>The first thing you have to know is the branch name for the
+ branch you are interested in getting at. To do this, look at some
+ long-lived file, say the top-level HISTORY file, with "cvs status
+ -v" to see what the branch names are. (Thanks to Ian Lance Taylor
+ for pointing out that this is the easiest way to do it.) Typical
+ branch names are:</P>
<PRE>
REL7_1_STABLE
REL7_0_PATCHES
REL6_5_PATCHES
</PRE>
-<P>OK, so how do you do work on a branch? By far the best way is to create
-a separate checkout tree for the branch and do your work in that. Not
-only is that the easiest way to deal with CVS, but you really need to
-have the whole past tree available anyway to test your work. (And you
-*better* test your work. Never forget that dot-releases tend to go out
-with very little beta testing --- so whenever you commit an update to a
-stable branch, you'd better be doubly sure that it's correct.)
-
-<P>Normally, to checkout the head branch, you just cd to the place you
-want to contain the toplevel "pgsql" directory and say
-
+ <P>OK, so how do you do work on a branch? By far the best way is to
+ create a separate checkout tree for the branch and do your work in
+ that. Not only is that the easiest way to deal with CVS, but you
+ really need to have the whole past tree available anyway to test
+ your work. (And you *better* test your work. Never forget that
+ dot-releases tend to go out with very little beta testing --- so
+ whenever you commit an update to a stable branch, you'd better be
+ doubly sure that it's correct.)</P>
+
+ <P>Normally, to checkout the head branch, you just cd to the place
+ you want to contain the toplevel "pgsql" directory and say</P>
<PRE>
cvs ... checkout pgsql
</PRE>
-<P>To get a past branch, you cd to whereever you want it and say
-
+ <P>To get a past branch, you cd to whereever you want it and
+ say</P>
<PRE>
cvs ... checkout -r BRANCHNAME pgsql
</PRE>
-<P>For example, just a couple days ago I did
-
+ <P>For example, just a couple days ago I did</P>
<PRE>
mkdir ~postgres/REL7_1
cd ~postgres/REL7_1
cvs ... checkout -r REL7_1_STABLE pgsql
</PRE>
-<P>and now I have a maintenance copy of 7.1.*.
+ <P>and now I have a maintenance copy of 7.1.*.</P>
-<P>When you've done a checkout in this way, the branch name is "sticky":
-CVS automatically knows that this directory tree is for the branch,
-and whenever you do "cvs update" or "cvs commit" in this tree, you'll
-fetch or store the latest version in the branch, not the head version.
-Easy as can be.
+ <P>When you've done a checkout in this way, the branch name is
+ "sticky": CVS automatically knows that this directory tree is for
+ the branch, and whenever you do "cvs update" or "cvs commit" in
+ this tree, you'll fetch or store the latest version in the branch,
+ not the head version. Easy as can be.</P>
-<P>So, if you have a patch that needs to apply to both the head and a
-recent stable branch, you have to make the edits and do the commit
-twice, once in your development tree and once in your stable branch
-tree. This is kind of a pain, which is why we don't normally fork
-the tree right away after a major release --- we wait for a dot-release
-or two, so that we won't have to double-patch the first wave of fixes.
+ <P>So, if you have a patch that needs to apply to both the head and
+ a recent stable branch, you have to make the edits and do the
+ commit twice, once in your development tree and once in your stable
+ branch tree. This is kind of a pain, which is why we don't normally
+ fork the tree right away after a major release --- we wait for a
+ dot-release or two, so that we won't have to double-patch the first
+ wave of fixes.</P>
<H3><A name="17">17</A>) How go I get involved in PostgreSQL
development?</H3>
+
<P>This was written by Lamar Owen:</P>
-<P>
-2001-06-22
-
-<P>
-> If someone was interested in joining the development team, where would
-<BR>
-> they...
-<BR>
-> - Find a description of the open source development process used by the
-<BR>
-> PostgreSQL team.
-<BR>
-
-<P>Read HACKERS for six months (or a full release cycle, whichever is longer).
-Really. HACKERS _is_the process. The process is not well documented (AFAIK
--- it may be somewhere that I am not aware of) -- and it changes continually.
-
-<P>
-> - Find the development environment (OS, system, compilers, etc)
-<BR>
-> required to develop code.
-<BR>
-
-<P><a href="developers.postgresql.org">Developers Corner</a> on the website
-has links to this information. The distribution tarball itself
-includes all the extra tools and documents that go beyond a good
-Unix-like development environment. In general, a modern unix with a
-modern gcc, GNU make or equivalent, autoconf (of a particular version),
-and good working knowledge of those tools are required.
-
-<P>
-> - Find an area or two that needs some support.
-<BR>
-
-<P>The TODO list.
-
-<P>You've made the first step, by finding and subscribing to HACKERS. Once you
-find an area to look at in the TODO, and have read the documentation on the
-internals, etc, then you check out a current CVS,write what you are going to
-write (keeping your CVS checkout up to date in the process), and make up a
-patch (as a context diff only) and send to the PATCHES list, prefereably.
-
-<P>Discussion on the patch typically happens here. If the patch adds a major
-feature, it would be a good idea to talk about it first on the HACKERS list,
-in order to increase the chances of it being accepted, as well as toavoid
-duplication of effort. Note that experienced developers with a proven track
-record usually get the big jobs -- for more than one reason. Also note that
-PostgreSQL is highly portable -- nonportable code will likely be dismissed
-out of hand.
-
-<P>Once your contributions get accepted, things move from there. Typically, you
-would be added as a developer on the list on the website when one of the
-other developers recommends it. Membership on the steering committee is by
-invitation only, by the other steering committee members, from what I have
-gathered watching froma distance.
-
-<P>I make these statements from having watched the process for over two years.
-
-<P>To see a good example of how one goes about this, search the archives for the
-name 'Tom Lane' and see what his first post consisted of, and where he took
-things. In particular, note that this hasn't been _that_ long ago -- and his
-bugfixing and general deep knowledge with this codebase is legendary. Take a
-few days to read after him. And pay special attention to both the sheer
-quantity as well as the painstaking quality of his work. Both are in high
-demand.
+
+ <P>2001-06-22</P>
+
+ <P>> If someone was interested in joining the development team,
+ where would<BR>
+ > they...<BR>
+ > - Find a description of the open source development process
+ used by the<BR>
+ > PostgreSQL team.<BR>
+ </P>
+
+ <P>Read HACKERS for six months (or a full release cycle, whichever
+ is longer). Really. HACKERS _is_the process. The process is not
+ well documented (AFAIK -- it may be somewhere that I am not aware
+ of) -- and it changes continually.</P>
+
+ <P>> - Find the development environment (OS, system, compilers,
+ etc)<BR>
+ > required to develop code.<BR>
+ </P>
+
+ <P><A href="developers.postgresql.org">Developers Corner</A> on the
+ website has links to this information. The distribution tarball
+ itself includes all the extra tools and documents that go beyond a
+ good Unix-like development environment. In general, a modern unix
+ with a modern gcc, GNU make or equivalent, autoconf (of a
+ particular version), and good working knowledge of those tools are
+ required.</P>
+
+ <P>> - Find an area or two that needs some support.<BR>
+ </P>
+
+ <P>The TODO list.</P>
+
+ <P>You've made the first step, by finding and subscribing to
+ HACKERS. Once you find an area to look at in the TODO, and have
+ read the documentation on the internals, etc, then you check out a
+ current CVS,write what you are going to write (keeping your CVS
+ checkout up to date in the process), and make up a patch (as a
+ context diff only) and send to the PATCHES list, prefereably.</P>
+
+ <P>Discussion on the patch typically happens here. If the patch
+ adds a major feature, it would be a good idea to talk about it
+ first on the HACKERS list, in order to increase the chances of it
+ being accepted, as well as toavoid duplication of effort. Note that
+ experienced developers with a proven track record usually get the
+ big jobs -- for more than one reason. Also note that PostgreSQL is
+ highly portable -- nonportable code will likely be dismissed out of
+ hand.</P>
+
+ <P>Once your contributions get accepted, things move from there.
+ Typically, you would be added as a developer on the list on the
+ website when one of the other developers recommends it. Membership
+ on the steering committee is by invitation only, by the other
+ steering committee members, from what I have gathered watching
+ froma distance.</P>
+
+ <P>I make these statements from having watched the process for over
+ two years.</P>
+
+ <P>To see a good example of how one goes about this, search the
+ archives for the name 'Tom Lane' and see what his first post
+ consisted of, and where he took things. In particular, note that
+ this hasn't been _that_ long ago -- and his bugfixing and general
+ deep knowledge with this codebase is legendary. Take a few days to
+ read after him. And pay special attention to both the sheer
+ quantity as well as the painstaking quality of his work. Both are
+ in high demand.</P>
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