Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Re: [HACKERS] PostgreSQL future ideas

pgdev@xs4all.nl ("Gevik Babakhani") writes:
> It might look like an impossible goal to achieve.. But if there is
> any serious plan/idea/ammo for this, I believe it would be very
> beneficial to the continuity of PG.

Actually, I imagine that such a rewrite would run a very considerable
risk of injuring the continuity of PostgreSQL VERY BADLY, to the point
of causing community fractures and forks of the codebase.

When you write something in C++, you have to pick a subset of the
language that is supported fairly identically (in semantics) by all of
the compilers that you wish to support.

Seeing as how PostgreSQL is already a mature system written in C, a
rewrite into C++, *which is a different language* that is NOT simply a
superset of C functionality, would require substantial effort, lead to
fractious disagreements, and would, without ANY doubt, fracture the
code base into *AT LEAST* two versions, namely:

a) The existing C code base, and
b) One (possibly more) C++ rewrites

This does not strike me as a particularly useful exercise. If I
intended such a rewrite, I'd much rather consider using something
*interestingly* different from C, like Erlang or Eiffel or Haskell.
--
"cbbrowne","@","linuxdatabases.info"
http://linuxfinances.info/info/sgml.html
For a good prime call:
391581 * 2^216193 - 1
-- smr2@cornell.edu (Szymon Rusinkiewicz)

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