Re: Proposal: Add JSON support

On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 12:02 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> writes:
>> On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 11:24 PM, Joseph Adams
>> <joeyadams3.14159@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> My reasoning for "It should be built-in" is:
>>>  * It would be nice to have a built-in serialization format that's
>>> available by default.
>>>  * It might be a little faster because it doesn't have to link to an
>>> external library.
>
>> I don't think either of these reasons is valid.
>
> FWIW, our track record with relying on external libraries has been less
> than great --- "upstream will maintain it" sounds good but has fallen
> over with respect to both the regex engine and the snowball stemmers,
> to take two examples.  And libxml2 has been nothing but a source of pain.
>
> If this is going to end up being one fairly small C file implementing
> a spec that is not a moving target, I'd vote against depending on an
> external library instead, no matter how spiffy and license-compatible
> the external library might be.

Fair enough.  Note that I did go on to say which reasons I did think
were potentially valid.  ;-)

...Robert