Re: shared_libperl, shared_libpython

On Wed, Apr 29, 2015 at 12:48 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> writes:
>> On 4/28/15 12:05 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
>>> Yeah.  Even more specifically, olinguito does have --with-python in its
>>> configure flags, but then the plpython Makefile skips the build because
>>> libpython isn't available as a shared library.  But the contrib test is
>>> (I assume, haven't looked) conditional only on the configure flag.
>>>
>>> I'm not real sure now why we felt that was a good approach.  The general
>>> project policy is that if you ask for a feature in the configure flags,
>>> we'll build it or die trying; how come this specific Python issue gets
>>> special treatment contrary to that policy?
>
>> The reason for the current setup is actually that when plperl and later
>> plpython was added, we still had Perl and Python client modules in our
>> tree (Pg.pm and pygresql), and configure --with-perl and --with-python
>> were meant to activate their build primarily.  Also, in those days,
>> having a shared libperl or libpython was rare.  But we didn't want to
>> fail the frontend interface builds because of that.  So we arrived at
>> the current workaround.
>
> Ah.  I'm glad you remember, because I didn't.

Interesting, those are pieces of history:
commit: f10a9033bf308f9dde0aa77caad6503e233489d1
author: Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>
date: Mon, 1 Sep 2003 23:01:49 +0000
Clean up after pygresql removal: adjust/remove documentation and remove
unneeded configure work.

commit: 9a0b4d7f847469544798133391e221481548e1b9
author: Marc G. Fournier <scrappy@hub.org>
date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 13:06:22 +0000

perl5 interface moved to gborg

>> My preference would be to rip all that out and let the compiler or
>> linker decide when it doesn't want to link something.
>
> Works for me, assuming that we get an understandable failure message and
> not, say, a plperl.so that mysteriously doesn't work.

+1.
-- 
Michael