Re: zlib for pg_dump

At 18:36 5/07/00 +0200, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
>Tom Lane writes:
>> 
>> Seems reasonable to me to look for libz automatically in the library
>> search path.  A --with switch would only serve as an addition to the
>> LIBS directory list, and as I commented in another connection I see no
>> good reason for adding a bunch of variant spellings of --with-libs ...
...
>We have to be able to determine the set of
>features that will be build by examining the configure command line

The feature (compressed backup output in pg_dump) is not readily deducible
from '--with-zlib'. It might be better to output a message from configure
if a needed library is not found:

"zlib compression library not found, pg_dump archives will not support
compression".

if, in the future, there is a gzip datatype, we could also output 'gzip
data types will not be supported' etc.

Alternatively, have a very specific flag: --with-compressed-dumps, then die
if there is no zlib.

But I'd stick with the check for zlib, since it is pretty common. The
*only* feature you lose by not having it is the compressed output in dumps:
if you request compression, it issues a warning and produces uncompressed
output. The archives are still readable when zlib is installed (and vice
verca in the case of -Z0).










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