Tom, Simon, etc.:
Of the several things which "PostgreSQL could learn from MySQL" which we
covered at pgCon was that the requirement to hunt hither and yon for
popular add-ins is one of the primary reasons for developers not using
PostgreSQL.
Further, one of the main reasons why people do use PostgreSQL is our
advanced functionality. If we focus only on core SQL features, there
are few reasons to use us over MySQL, Oracle express, SQL Server, or
Firebird.
Minimalism isn't its own reward. Obviously Tom has reason to worry
about the overall maintenance effort for the PostgreSQL code. But we
need to balance that against the need to add features that users want
and will keep our community growing.
If the way to do this is by packaging stuff together but maintaining
separate CVS trees, then ok -- but then we need a plan for how we're
going to do that, rather than just rejecting patches.
The general case aside, I really feel strongly that citext belongs in
core unless we come up with some other means to do case-insensitive
text. It's one of the top 10 newbie questions.
--Josh