Re: RFC: PGAN

On Jan 7, 2010, at 8:38 PM, David Golden wrote:

> Thoughts in no particular order:

Thanks for these, David.

> * Limiting to gzip/bzip2 tarballs may screw over Windows users who
> don't have access to a portable extraction program.  (CPAN also
> supports .zip files.)  Perl papers over these cracks with Perl
> (Archive::*), but PGAN won't have that as an option.

Good point. I'll probably require Archive::* to start with in the PGAN client. But implementation aside, I can add a note about .zip.

> * META spec -- don't get too wedded to the CPAN spec until we finish
> 2.0 and you decide if you still like it.

So far so good. I don't expect to get to the client until after 2.0 is finished anyway.

> * I don't see how a Makefile can be optional if you need it to build extensions

Hrm. Well you can upload scripts to CPAN. Did you know that? CPAN.pm doesn't know what to do with them, but they're there. I was just trying to keep things as open as possible. Might end up requiring it anyway, for the reasons you cite.

> * Don't be specific about update frequency for a search site.
> "Updated as often as is practical" or something vague like that.   (If
> you implement Andreas fast mirroring system, you can update within
> minutes!)

Will have to check that out. I plan to steal everything I can can from PAUSE, CPAN, CPAN.pm, CPANPLUS, and JSAN::Client.

> * PGAN client -- decide if you want to have command arguments like
> apt-get (e.g. "pgan install Foo") or whether you want to be like cpan
> without them (e.g. "cpan Foo"); most OS installers seem to use
> 'install' so either  choose that or make your client smart enough to
> DWIM

Yeah, should be easy.

> * Define a "minimum API" between pgan and make, including arguments
> that all Makefiles must support.  You want to avoid the soup of
> arguments that EU::MM and M::B have built up.  Do you need "make
> installdeps"?  Do you need an equivalent to INSTALL_BASE?  Standardize
> these now.

I'm not doing that part. I'm relying completely on PGXS, which is the Makefile included in PostgreSQL builds (postgresql-devel packages), to supply all that stuff. I don't want to go near the actual build system. Way too many bikeshed colors there and not my area of expertise in the slightest.

> * Create a common configuration file with sections for different
> things like mirrors, commands, etc.  Have a 'pgan' section for things
> that are specific to that particular client only.  That way, when
> someone writes pganplus, it can us the same common configurations

Good call.

> [Ed. note: If CT2.0 migration happens on schedule, a common CPAN/PLUS
> config system may be my QA hackathon project.]

I'll be at OSCON for sure!

Best,

David