From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Andrew Dunstan <andrew.dunstan@2ndquadrant.com>
cc: Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net>, Noah Misch <noah@leadboat.com>,
        Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>,
        Chapman Flack <chap@anastigmatix.net>,
        Peter Eisentraut <peter.eisentraut@2ndquadrant.com>,
        Joe Nelson <joe@begriffs.com>,
        "pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org" <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: POC: rational number type (fractions)
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Comments: In-reply-to Andrew Dunstan <andrew.dunstan@2ndquadrant.com>
	message dated "Fri, 03 Jul 2020 11:43:30 -0400"
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Date: Fri, 03 Jul 2020 12:18:45 -0400
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Andrew Dunstan <andrew.dunstan@2ndquadrant.com> writes:
> On 7/2/20 10:01 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
>> Yeah.  We *must not* simply give up on extensibility and decide that
>> every interesting feature has to be in core.  I don't have any great
>> ideas about how we grow the wider Postgres development community and
>> infrastructure, but that certainly isn't the path to doing so.

> I've been thinking about this a bit. Right now there isn't anything
> outside of core that seems to work well. PGXN was supposed to be our
> CPAN equivalent, but it doesn't seem to have worked out that way, it
> never really got the traction.

Yeah.  Can we analyze why it hasn't done better?  Can we improve it
rather than starting something completely new?

> I'm thinking about something different,
> in effect a curated set of extensions, maintained separately from the
> core. Probably the involvement of one or two committers would be good,
> but the idea is that in general core developers wouldn't need to be
> concerned about these. For want of a better name let's call it
> postgresql-extras. I would undertake to provide buildfarm support, and
> possibly we would provide packages to complement the PGDG yum and apt
> repos. If people think that's a useful idea then those of us who are
> prepared to put in some effort on this can take the discussion offline
> and come back with a firmer proposal.

My only objection to this idea is that competing with PGXN might not
be a great thing.  But then again, maybe it would be.  Or maybe this
is an intermediate tier between PGXN and core.   Anyway, it certainly
seems worth spending more thought on.  I agree that we need to do
*something* proactive rather than just hoping the extension community
gets stronger by itself.

			regards, tom lane