Re: Greatest Common Divisor

On 1/3/20 1:46 PM, Robert Haas wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 3, 2020 at 1:10 PM Merlin Moncure <mmoncure@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Just stop doing it.  It's very little extra work to package an item
>> into an extension and this protects your hapless users who might have
>> implemented a function called gcd() that does something different.
>> ...
> There are counter-arguments to that, though. Maintaining a lot of
> extensions with only one or two functions in them is a nuisance.
> Having things installed by default is convenient for wanting to use
> them. Maintaining contrib code so that it works whether or not the SQL
> definitions have been updated via ALTER EXTENSION .. UPDATE takes some
> work and thought, and sometimes we screw it up.

Is there a middle ground staring us in the face, where certain things
could be added in core, but in a new schema like pg_math (pg_ !), so
if you want them you put them on your search path or qualify them
explicitly, and if you don't, you don't?

Regards,
-Chap