Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2003 15:39:57 -0500
From: johnnnnnn <john@phaedrusdeinus.org>
To: Rod Taylor <rbt@rbt.ca>, pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: PostgreSQL vs. MySQL
Message-ID: <20030704203957.GA51795@performics.com>
References: <CJEBLDCHAADCLAGIGCOOEEDMCLAA.michael.mattox@verideon.com>
	<1057330140.40425.57.camel@jester>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
In-Reply-To: <1057330140.40425.57.camel@jester>
User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.1i

On Fri, Jul 04, 2003 at 10:49:01AM -0400, Rod Taylor wrote:
> > In my opinion the defaults should be set up for a typical database
> > server machine.
> 
> Ok.. thats fair.  The first problem would be to define typical for
> current PostgreSQL installations, and typical for non-postgresql
> installations (the folks we want to convert).

It's been a while since the last one of these discussions, so stop me
if this has been suggested before, but...

Do we actually want to have a default configuration file?

Seriously, if we provide, say, 4 or 5 files based on various system
assumptions (conf.MINIMAL, conf.AVERAGE, conf.MULTIDISK, or whatever),
then we might be able to get away with not providing an actual
default. Change the installation instructions to say

>>>
PostgreSQL requires a configuration file, which it expects to be
located in $DIR. Provided are several example configurations (in
$DIR/eg/). If you're just starting with PostrgreSQL, we recommend
reading through those and selecting one which most closely matches
your machine.

If you're in doubt as to which file to use, try $AVERAGE. If you're
still having difficulty getting PostgreSQL to run, try
$MINIMAL. $MINIMAL should work on every supported platform, but is not
optimized for modern hardware -- PostgreSQL will not run well in this
configuration.
<<<

This makes the installation process slightly less simple, but only in
the way that we want it to be. That is, it forces the end user to the
realization that there actually is configuration to be done, and
forces them into a minimally interactive way to deal with it.

It also doesn't require any kernel-test coding, or really any
development at all, so we should theoretically be able to get it
finished and ready to go more quickly.

Thoughts?

-johnnnnnnnnnnn