Re: Very confusing installcheck behavior with PGXS

On 1/7/16 11:49 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
> Jim Nasby <Jim.Nasby@bluetreble.com> writes:
>> input and output are used in only 3 places in the whole tree[1], so
>> maybe the best thing to do is just rip support for that out of
>> pg_regress and handle it some other way.
>
> [ raised eyebrow ]  It's not apparent to me that moving it someplace else
> would reduce the net cruft any.

What it would do is de-mystify that part of pg_regress. I agree that 
vpath is a particular problem for input/ and output/, but it's even 
worse when most everyone thinks sql/ and expected/ are inputs to 
pg_regress, and not potential outputs.

> The real problem is that Peter just did the minimum amount of work
> to get VPATH to work at all, not to get it to work in a non-surprising
> way.  We really need this code to be explicitly VPATH-aware, I think,
> rather than overloading the inputdir and outputdir concepts in
> multiple ways.

Agreed, especially because if it's not then if you try to use both 
input/ and sql/ or output/ and expected/ you're not going to get the 
results you'd like.

If we want to keep input/ and output/ inside pg_regress then I think 
what needs to happen in a vpath build is to first create $vpath/sql and 
$vpath/expected, copy anything from $(uh... source?)/sql and /expected 
there, and then process /input and /output (and deal with any duplicate 
file references).
-- 
Jim Nasby, Data Architect, Blue Treble Consulting, Austin TX
Experts in Analytics, Data Architecture and PostgreSQL
Data in Trouble? Get it in Treble! http://BlueTreble.com