Re: Using LibPq in TAP tests via FFI

On Mon, Jun 17, 2024 at 10:38 AM Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de> wrote:
> before:
>
> [19:40:47.468] 135/296 postgresql:pg_amcheck / pg_amcheck/004_verify_heapam                            OK
  7.70s   32 subtests passed 
> [19:43:40.853] 232/296 postgresql:amcheck / amcheck/001_verify_heapam                                  OK
 36.50s   272 subtests passed 
>
> after:
> [20:22:55.495] 133/296 postgresql:pg_amcheck / pg_amcheck/004_verify_heapam                            OK
  4.60s   32 subtests passed 
> [20:25:13.641] 212/296 postgresql:amcheck / amcheck/001_verify_heapam                                  OK
  4.87s   272 subtests passed 

Nice!

> > I agree with you that falling back on BackgroundPsql is not a terribly
> > satisfactory solution.
>
> I'm somewhat doubtful we'll just agree on making FFI::Platypus a hard
> dependency, but if we agree to do so...

Why can't we just do that?  I mean, do we have any concrete reason to
think that it'll block a supported platform?

I'm personally willing to test/validate on the full set of non-Linux
Unixen and write up the install instructions to help eg build farm
animal owners adjust.  Really this is mostly about libffi, which is
super widely ported, and it is required by Python which we already
soft-depend on, and will hard-depend on if we drop autoconf.  The rest
is presumably just Perl xs glue to drive it, which, if it doesn't work
on some niche platform, you'd think should be easy enough to fix...