Re: pg_upgrade project status

On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 11:39:50AM -0300, Alvaro Herrera wrote:
> Heikki Linnakangas wrote:
> > Andrew Dunstan wrote:
> >> Zdenek Kotala wrote:
> >>> 2) pg_upgrade.sh
> >>> http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2008-12/msg00248.php
> >>>
> >>> Pg_upgrade.sh is shell script for catalog conversion. It works for
> >>> 8.3->8.4 upgrade. It will be useful while we will not have better
> >>> solution. Disadvantage is that it is korn shell script. The idea is to
> >>> rewrite it in PERL which is more portable, but I'm not PERL expert and
> >>> currently there is no workable solution.
> >>
> >> I have had a very brief look at this. Translation to perl doesn't look  
> >> difficult. I'll see what I can do during the next week or so.
> >
> > We don't require perl for any other feature, do we? Seems like a pretty  
> > onerous requireemnt for Windows in particular. We do use perl in the  
> > build scripts, but that's only required if you want to compile from 
> > source.
> 
> I think it's fairly easy to install Perl on Windows actually.  It
> doesn't sound too onerous a requirement if you want in-place upgrade;
> actually it looks a very reasonable one.
> 
> Much more reasonable than Korn shell in any case (or any shell for that
> matter; I think anything is going to be more of a potentially painful
> platform dependency than Perl).
> 
> -- 
> Alvaro Herrera                                http://www.CommandPrompt.com/
> PostgreSQL Replication, Consulting, Custom Development, 24x7 support
> 
+1

I agree with Alvaro. Perl is a breeze to install on Windows with
Activestate and that using shell code to perform this task adds a
huge platform dependency to the code. Perl is a known and well defined
quantity for scripting.

Cheers,
Ken