There are Windows binaries on the PostgreSQL FTP server mirrors, for
example,

http://ftp.de.postgresql.org/mirror/postgresql/binary/v7.3.1/Windows/

that users are having problems with.  Apparently there is no name or
address of any creator available.  So who did this and would like to fix
the packaging?

-- 
Peter Eisentraut   peter_e@gmx.net


Wed, 5 Mar 2003 23:48:28 +0100 (CET)
Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>
Who puts the Windows binaries on the FTP server?

Justin put them up, but I believe that any bug reports for them should be
sent to pgsql-ports@postgresql.org ...

On Wed, 5 Mar 2003, Peter Eisentraut wrote:

> There are Windows binaries on the PostgreSQL FTP server mirrors, for
> example,
>
> http://ftp.de.postgresql.org/mirror/postgresql/binary/v7.3.1/Windows/
>
> that users are having problems with.  Apparently there is no name or
> address of any creator available.  So who did this and would like to fix
> the packaging?
>
> --
> Peter Eisentraut   peter_e@gmx.net
>
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 5: Have you checked our extensive FAQ?
>
> http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faqs/FAQ.html
>

Wed, 5 Mar 2003 19:06:04 -0400 (AST)
"Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy@hub.org>
Re: Who puts the Windows binaries on the FTP server?
Marc G. Fournier wrote:
> Justin put them up, but I believe that any bug reports for them should be
> sent to pgsql-ports@postgresql.org ...

Yep, that's the first "Proof of Concept" build, and it *prominently* has 
a message at the start of the installation that says to email me with 
any problems about it.

I'm open to suggestions for making a more visible way for people to know 
how to contact us, if needed.

:)

Regards and best wishes,

Justin Clift


> On Wed, 5 Mar 2003, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> 
> 
>>There are Windows binaries on the PostgreSQL FTP server mirrors, for
>>example,
>>
>>http://ftp.de.postgresql.org/mirror/postgresql/binary/v7.3.1/Windows/
>>
>>that users are having problems with.  Apparently there is no name or
>>address of any creator available.  So who did this and would like to fix
>>the packaging?
>>
>>--
>>Peter Eisentraut   peter_e@gmx.net


-- 
"My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those
who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the
first group; there was less competition there."
- Indira Gandhi


Thu, 06 Mar 2003 14:53:18 +1030
Justin Clift <justin@postgresql.org>
Re: Who puts the Windows binaries on the FTP server?
Justin Clift writes:

> Yep, that's the first "Proof of Concept" build, and it *prominently* has
> a message at the start of the installation that says to email me with
> any problems about it.

Maybe a so-called "Proof of Concept" build could be put into an area on
the FTP server that conveys that fact in the directory names (like "test"
or "contrib" or whatever).  Because those who need a more production-grade
build will likely confuse this.

-- 
Peter Eisentraut   peter_e@gmx.net


Thu, 6 Mar 2003 14:57:46 +0100 (CET)
Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>
Re: Who puts the Windows binaries on the FTP server?
Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> Justin Clift writes:
 >
>>Yep, that's the first "Proof of Concept" build, and it *prominently* has
>>a message at the start of the installation that says to email me with
>>any problems about it.
> 
> Maybe a so-called "Proof of Concept" build could be put into an area on
> the FTP server that conveys that fact in the directory names (like "test"
> or "contrib" or whatever).  Because those who need a more production-grade
> build will likely confuse this.

That's probably not a bad idea.

It has warnings *all over it* (main window title, big warning messages 
during the install, etc), but we know from experience that some people 
don't read anything and just click the Next button until things finish.

Marc, what do you feel?  How about a "testing" or "development" or 
similar base directory on the website to put testing releases?

Regards and best wishes,

Justin Clift

-- 
"My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those
who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the
first group; there was less competition there."
- Indira Gandhi


Fri, 07 Mar 2003 00:41:23 +1030
Justin Clift <justin@postgresql.org>
Re: Who puts the Windows binaries on the FTP server?

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1


> I'm open to suggestions for making a more visible way for people to know 
> how to contact us, if needed.


How about putting a README file in that directory as well, giving out 
the same warnings and contact information that appears upon install?


- --
Greg Sabino Mullane greg@turnstep.com
PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 200303061015

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Comment: http://www.turnstep.com/pgp.html

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zuiAS4rFB5hYhk0LuxvGMQE=
=9ntO
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----



Thu,  6 Mar 2003 15:23:39 -0000
greg@turnstep.com
Re: Who puts the Windows binaries on the FTP server?
greg@turnstep.com wrote:
<snip>
> How about putting a README file in that directory as well, giving out 
> the same warnings and contact information that appears upon install?

Thanks Greg, excellent suggestion.

Just added it to my personal ToDo list.

:)

Regards and best wishes,

Justin Clift


> 
> - --
> Greg Sabino Mullane greg@turnstep.com
> PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 200303061015


-- 
"My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those
who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the
first group; there was less competition there."
- Indira Gandhi


Fri, 07 Mar 2003 02:33:56 +1030
Justin Clift <justin@postgresql.org>
Re: Who puts the Windows binaries on the FTP server?

What is this build, exactly?  It is Jan's patch brough up to 7.3, or cygwin?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Justin Clift wrote:
> greg@turnstep.com wrote:
> <snip>
> > How about putting a README file in that directory as well, giving out 
> > the same warnings and contact information that appears upon install?
> 
> Thanks Greg, excellent suggestion.
> 
> Just added it to my personal ToDo list.
> 
> :)
> 
> Regards and best wishes,
> 
> Justin Clift
> 
> 
> > 
> > - --
> > Greg Sabino Mullane greg@turnstep.com
> > PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 200303061015
> 
> 
> -- 
> "My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those
> who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the
> first group; there was less competition there."
> - Indira Gandhi
> 
> 
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 3: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate
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> message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
> 

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  13 Roberts Road
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

Fri, 7 Mar 2003 12:38:20 -0500 (EST)
Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
Re: Who puts the Windows binaries on the FTP server?
Bruce Momjian wrote:
> What is this build, exactly?  It is Jan's patch brough up to 7.3, or cygwin?

It's a simplified installation package of 7.3.1 with cygwin.  Put it 
together so we can get a feel for the packaging issues we'll need to 
take into account for the proper release of a 7.4 Windows version.

Getting the next version out the door is taking a bit more time than 
anticipated though.  :(

Regards and best wishes,

Justin Clift

-- 
"My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those
who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the
first group; there was less competition there."
- Indira Gandhi


Sat, 08 Mar 2003 10:46:55 +1030
Justin Clift <justin@postgresql.org>
Re: Who puts the Windows binaries on the FTP server?
It's rumoured that Justin Clift once said:
> It's a simplified installation package of 7.3.1 with cygwin.  Put it
> together so we can get a feel for the packaging issues we'll need to
> take into account for the proper release of a 7.4 Windows version.

Yeah, but it won't will it? You're seeing all the normal Cygwin issues but
nicely hidden away I'll bet. Installing the native version will be easy,
as we won't be messing around with Cywin or CygIPC. I would expect to be
able to build an installer in about 15 minutes excluding the time taken to
make the installer's UI look purdy...
Regards, Dave.





Sat, 8 Mar 2003 11:34:49 -0000 (GMT)
"Dave Page" <dpage@vale-housing.co.uk>
Re: Who puts the Windows binaries on the FTP server?
Dave Page wrote:
> It's rumoured that Justin Clift once said:
> 
>>It's a simplified installation package of 7.3.1 with cygwin.  Put it
>>together so we can get a feel for the packaging issues we'll need to
>>take into account for the proper release of a 7.4 Windows version.
> 
> Yeah, but it won't will it? You're seeing all the normal Cygwin issues but
> nicely hidden away I'll bet. Installing the native version will be easy,
> as we won't be messing around with Cywin or CygIPC. I would expect to be
> able to build an installer in about 15 minutes excluding the time taken to
> make the installer's UI look purdy...
> Regards, Dave.

There's more to making PostgreSQL work on Windows than just the "pure 
packaging" issues.  We still have to figure out how we're going to 
handle stuff like needed grep, sed, etc just for PostgreSQL to run 
(they're required by initdb).

We're also going to need to have a good idea of what other nice features 
could/should be packaged along with it.  i.e.:

  + a GUI to control some things (installation/deinstallation of the
    PostgreSQL Service, perhaps vacuuming, etc).

  + Shortcuts in the Program menu to things (PostgreSQL website(s),
    online documentation, etc)

  + Which parts of the installation should be mandatory, and which should
    be optional.  i.e. Base server files should be mandatory, HTML docs
    should be optional, perhaps include the ODBC driver as optional too.

Things like that.

Regards and best wishes,

Justin Clift

-- 
"My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those
who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the
first group; there was less competition there."
- Indira Gandhi


Sun, 09 Mar 2003 15:03:46 +1030
Justin Clift <justin@postgresql.org>
Re: Who puts the Windows binaries on the FTP server?
Dave Page wrote:
> It's rumoured that Justin Clift once said:
> 
>>There's more to making PostgreSQL work on Windows than just the "pure
>>packaging" issues.  We still have to figure out how we're going to
>>handle stuff like needed grep, sed, etc just for PostgreSQL to run
>>(they're required by initdb).
> 
> I thought the idea was initdb would be rewritten in C. We cannot include
> grep/sed etc as they're GPL...

I heard Peter mention that, but my email seems to be a tad spotty and I 
haven't come across the rest of the conversation about it.

That would be really good of course, as it reduces the external 
dependencies.  :)


>>We're also going to need to have a good idea of what other nice
>>features  could/should be packaged along with it.  i.e.:
>>
>> + a GUI to control some things (installation/deinstallation of the
>>   PostgreSQL Service, perhaps vacuuming, etc).
> 
> 
> Hang on, I heard of a good one the other day... :-)

There's a couple of potentials.  ;-)


>> + Shortcuts in the Program menu to things (PostgreSQL website(s),
>>   online documentation, etc)
> 
> Those are just decisions to make aren't they? They don't require a Cygwin
> proof of concept.

Sure.  But I hadn't thought about them until building the cygwin proof 
of concept.  Think of it as a "test run" to see what kind of things it 
brought to mind.  :)

Another thing is the international support.  The Proof of Concept 
version was a bad hack in that it forced installation into "C:\Program 
Files\PostgreSQL".  For non-english versions of Windows, they have 
"C:\Program Files" being names to other things, dependant on the 
language.  This broke the installation of course.  :(

With a proper installer (as you've mentioned), that shouldn't be a 
problem as it should automatically install into the correct "PostgreSQL" 
subdirectory of whatever the equivalent of "Program Files" is, on 
whatever drive.  Registry entries (if used) should properly match of course.


>> + Which parts of the installation should be mandatory, and which
>> should
>>   be optional.  i.e. Base server files should be mandatory, HTML docs
>>   should be optional, perhaps include the ODBC driver as optional too.
> 
> Likewise, these are decisions to make and then suitable programming of the
> installer. Making bits optional should be trivial in any good installer.
> Don't get me wrong, I think it's great that someone has finally built a
> good Cygwin based package - I just don't think it answers many of the
> issues that we will likely encounter.

No, but it brought some of them to light.  :)


> Regards, Dave.
> 
> PS. Is the source on the ftpsite - if not you'll have Jason after you
> before long :-)

The source?  It's the standard version of cygwin.  It's just packaged 
differently.  :)

The packaging scripts themselves though have gone into the ether 
forever, as the drive they were on was lost a few weeks ago (rebooted 
one day and it didn't come back).  :(  If absolutely needed, we could 
reverse engineer them back from the installation package. (painful)

Regards and best wishes,

Justin Clift

-- 
"My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those
who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the
first group; there was less competition there."
- Indira Gandhi


Sun, 09 Mar 2003 20:27:15 +1030
Justin Clift <justin@postgresql.org>
Re: Who puts the Windows binaries on the FTP server?
It's rumoured that Justin Clift once said:

> There's more to making PostgreSQL work on Windows than just the "pure
> packaging" issues.  We still have to figure out how we're going to
> handle stuff like needed grep, sed, etc just for PostgreSQL to run
> (they're required by initdb).

I thought the idea was initdb would be rewritten in C. We cannot include
grep/sed etc as they're GPL...
> We're also going to need to have a good idea of what other nice
> features  could/should be packaged along with it.  i.e.:
>
>  + a GUI to control some things (installation/deinstallation of the
>    PostgreSQL Service, perhaps vacuuming, etc).

Hang on, I heard of a good one the other day... :-)

>  + Shortcuts in the Program menu to things (PostgreSQL website(s),
>    online documentation, etc)

Those are just decisions to make aren't they? They don't require a Cygwin
proof of concept.
>  + Which parts of the installation should be mandatory, and which
>  should
>    be optional.  i.e. Base server files should be mandatory, HTML docs
>    should be optional, perhaps include the ODBC driver as optional too.

Likewise, these are decisions to make and then suitable programming of the
installer. Making bits optional should be trivial in any good installer.
Don't get me wrong, I think it's great that someone has finally built a
good Cygwin based package - I just don't think it answers many of the
issues that we will likely encounter.
Regards, Dave.

PS. Is the source on the ftpsite - if not you'll have Jason after you
before long :-)



Sun, 9 Mar 2003 10:15:16 -0000 (GMT)
"Dave Page" <dpage@vale-housing.co.uk>
Re: Who puts the Windows binaries on the FTP server?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dave Page" <dpage@vale-housing.co.uk>
> I thought the idea was initdb would be rewritten in C. We cannot include
> grep/sed etc as they're GPL...

I'd be happy to do this if it hasn't been done. After a quick perusal of the
script I think it would be very straightforward.

cheers

andrew


Sun, 9 Mar 2003 09:38:37 -0500
"Andrew Dunstan" <andrew@dunslane.net>
Re: Who puts the Windows binaries on the FTP server?
Justin Clift writes:

> > I thought the idea was initdb would be rewritten in C. We cannot include
> > grep/sed etc as they're GPL...
>
> I heard Peter mention that, but my email seems to be a tad spotty and I
> haven't come across the rest of the conversation about it.

I've started rewriting some of the shell scripts in C.  initdb will be a
lot trickier.  We'll see.

-- 
Peter Eisentraut   peter_e@gmx.net


Mon, 10 Mar 2003 03:10:29 +0100 (CET)
Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>
Re: Who puts the Windows binaries on the FTP server?
Andrew Dunstan wrote:
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Dave Page" <dpage@vale-housing.co.uk>
> > I thought the idea was initdb would be rewritten in C. We cannot include
> > grep/sed etc as they're GPL...
> 
> I'd be happy to do this if it hasn't been done. After a quick perusal of the
> script I think it would be very straightforward.

I have Jan's and SRA's version of initdb for Win32, so I will probably
be using one of those in the 7.4 Win32 port.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  13 Roberts Road
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

Mon, 10 Mar 2003 10:51:53 -0500 (EST)
Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
Re: Who puts the Windows binaries on the FTP server?
Andrew Dunstan wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Dave Page" <dpage@vale-housing.co.uk>
> 
>>I thought the idea was initdb would be rewritten in C. We cannot include
>>grep/sed etc as they're GPL...
> 
> I'd be happy to do this if it hasn't been done. After a quick perusal of the
> script I think it would be very straightforward.

Sounds like the "who is going to do this" needs to be sorted out. 
PeerDirect and SRA have already done this, Peter has started on it as 
well, etc.

Perhaps Peter should integrate the patches from PeerDirect or SRA, as 
he'll be most familiar with the code and it'll then take that bit of 
work off Bruce's plate?

It's just a thought anyway...  :)

Regards and best wishes,

Justin Clift


> cheers
> 
> andrew


-- 
"My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those
who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the
first group; there was less competition there."
- Indira Gandhi


Tue, 11 Mar 2003 05:03:34 +1030
Justin Clift <justin@postgresql.org>
Re: Who puts the Windows binaries on the FTP server?