From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: "Jelte Fennema-Nio" <postgres@jeltef.nl>
cc: "Ashutosh Bapat" <ashutosh.bapat.oss@gmail.com>,
        "PostgreSQL Hackers" <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>,
        "Daniel Gustafsson" <daniel@yesql.se>
Subject: Re: Add "format" target to make and ninja to run pgindent and
 pgperltidy
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Comments: In-reply-to "Jelte Fennema-Nio" <postgres@jeltef.nl>
	message dated "Wed, 31 Dec 2025 19:17:39 +0100"
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Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2025 13:37:21 -0500
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"Jelte Fennema-Nio" <postgres@jeltef.nl> writes:
> On Wed Dec 31, 2025 at 4:26 PM CET, Tom Lane wrote:
>> On the whole I'd recommend not trying to automate the perltidy
>> step yet.  Cost/benefit is just not very good.

> I would like to get to a point where it is enforced for every commit
> pushed by committers, so the same as with pgindent.

As an affected committer, I want to push back against having such
a requirement, because I don't think it is reasonable to require
everybody to have precisely version XYZ of perltidy installed.
If that's not the version provided by their platform-of-choice,
it's an annoying hurdle.

As a comparison point, we did not start requiring pgindent cleanliness
until we imported bsdindent into our tree, so as not to have an
external dependency for that.  (But I can't see vendoring perltidy,
even if there weren't license issues involved.)

I recognize the analogy to requiring a specific version of autoconf,
but the difference is that without autoconf you just plain can't work
on the configure code.  Here, the hurdle would be erected for no
reason stronger than neatnik-ism, and IMO that's not a good enough
reason to put yet another burden on committers.

I'm even less pleased by the notion that we'd soon add still another
such requirement for python.

			regards, tom lane