On 12/24/24 02:23, David E. Wheeler wrote:
On Dec 11, 2024, at 19:49, Euler Taveira <eu...@eulerto.com> wrote:

FWIW, Id like to have some more information in there, without commenting on
the specifics.

+1 for the general idea.

Same.

I received some reports like [1] related to wal2json
that people wants to obtain the output plugin version. Since it is not installed
via CREATE EXTENSION, it is not possible to detect what version is installed,
hence, some tools cannot have some logic to probe the module version.

I’m all for additional metadata for native extensions, but I’d also like to 
draw attention to the “Future” section my proposal[1] to require that 
module-only extensions also include a control file and be loadable via CREATE 
EXTENSION (and proposed *_preload_extensions GUCs[2]). This would unify how all 
types of extensions are added to a database, and would include version 
information as for all other CREATE EXTENSION extensions.
Looking into the control file, I see that most parameters are unnecessary for the library. Why do we have to maintain this file? In my experience, extra features are usually designed as shared libraries to 1) reduce complexity, 2) work across the overall cluster, 3) be dynamically loaded, 4) be hidden, and not waste the database with any type of object. - remember, applications sometimes manage their data through an API; databases and any objects inside may be created/moved automatically, and we want to work in any database. The 'CREATE EXTENSION' statement would have made sense if we had register/unregister hook machinery. Without that, it seems it is just about maintaining the library's version and comments locally in a specific database. It would be interesting to read about your real-life cases that caused your proposal.

--
regards, Andrei Lepikhov


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