Re: [HACKERS] perl interface bug?

   > Ok, I see now.  So, we need the following:
   >
   > - a Makefile.PL that works out of the box for the above sequence,
   >   given that POSTGRES_HOME is set properly.
   >
   > - a Makefile.PL that works with the Postgres installation and gets the
   >   right shared library, so if we run `make test' later (or use the
   >   interface in any way) it works immediately upon Postgres
   >   installation.

   let's forget about the make test. In order to get the right
   libpq.so it should be sufficient to change the Makefile in the
   interfaces directory in a way, that 'make' and 'make install'
   for perl5 is called after 'make install' in libpq. Of course
   I would have to adapt Makefile.PL in order to use pgsql/lib
   instead of pgsql/src/interfaces/libpq as linkpath for libpq.so.

I don't think we need to give up on make test.  Either the installer
already has postgresql installed and running (in which case the
standard perl procedure with POSTGRES_HOME set will work) or he/she
doesn't and is doing this as part of the main postgresql
installation.  In that case we just repeat the build after libpq is
installed; no problem.

   But: for 'make install' in the perl directory, you need to be
   root, because the perl installation usually is owned by root.
   How do you want to solve this problem ? Those people without
   root access can say 'perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=/my/perl_directory'
   to install the module into a private directory. Again this
   is not possible with a hard coded 'perl Makefile'.

This is a complication.  Perhaps to be solved secondarily.  For my
information so I can think about solutions, in your command what
exactly is PREFIX pointing to?  Directly to the root of the perl
library tree?

Would a solution be to enhance the --with-perl option to point to the
directory of interest unless configure is run by root?  In that case
the interfaces/Makefile could include the prefix argument if
necessary and things would just work.  If one does the perl stuff
standalone, they can always issue the command with a prefix
themselves.

Let's get the rest of this done right first, though and worry about
this root/nonroot install problem next.  I goofed my earlier patches,
so I'll resubmit them and go from there.

Cheers,
Brook