From: Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com>
Organization: Aglio Database Solutions
To: pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: uuid type for postgres
Date: Wed, 7 Sep 2005 09:45:17 -0700
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Cc: nathan wagner <nw@hydaspes.if.org>
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	<20050907051508.GA3572@granicus.if.org>
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Nathan,

> > - linking against libuuid is fine for a contrib/ extension, but no
> > good for a built-in type.  A real uuid would have to do a proper
> > independent implementation of uuid creation within pgsql.
>
> Why?

I think the issue is portability.  Remember that this type needs to work on 
Windows as well as all POSIX platforms and AIX.

> I'm not sure what the default build instructions are, but i've got
> the following on my linux box...

> Quite a list.  I wonder what readline is doing there.

Readline is for PSQL command completion and history.  As for the rest, they 
are *optional* modules that apparently your RPM builder chose to include; I 
build from source and my only dependencies are bison, flex, gcc and perl.

> It would appear that linking against libraries is just fine, I don't
> see that uuid is any different.

Is it portable to all platforms we support?  How does it generate its machine 
identifier?

One of the differences between an add-in and core code is support for all 
PostgreSQL platforms.

-- 
Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco