From: Álvaro Herrera <alvherre@kurilemu.de>
To: Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net>
Cc: Greg Burd <greg@burd.me>
Cc: PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: Add a Nix flake
Date: Sun, 20 Sep 2026 14:06:29 +0200
Message-ID: <aq_LNx1TJ4qg3BVx@alvherre.pgsql> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <58ed7628-7527-450d-8acc-b14a322e9375@dunslane.net>
On 2026-Aug-25, Andrew Dunstan wrote:
> Well, "growing" could cover a multitude of possibilities. It could mean
> there was one and now there are two. Maybe there are lots out there and I at
> least just haven't heard of it. But if you want to say that there is a
> significant number of people actually contributing here who use it that
> would be all the better for some evidence.
For what it's worth, I think a descriptive/declarative mechanism for
configuring buildfarm animals would beat the current Perl-code-based
system hands down. For instance, if I want to switch an animal from
Configure to Meson, I have to essentially redo the whole config from
scratch, which is rather a mess. I'd much rather state which features I
want to be used, and then have an intermediate layer figure out which
command line options must be used.
Maybe a Nix flake system would enable something like that without too
much development effort.
--
Álvaro Herrera Breisgau, Deutschland — https://www.EnterpriseDB.com/
"I'm impressed how quickly you are fixing this obscure issue. I came from
MS SQL and it would be hard for me to put into words how much of a better job
you all are doing on [PostgreSQL]."
Steve Midgley, http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-sql/2008-08/msg00000.php
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To: pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Cc: alvherre@kurilemu.de, andrew@dunslane.net, greg@burd.me, pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org
Subject: Re: Add a Nix flake
In-Reply-To: <aq_LNx1TJ4qg3BVx@alvherre.pgsql>
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