[postgis-devel] Moving towards a 1.2.2 release?

[Paul Ramsey]

So the client software has to know exactly what distribution it is  
working against and create its own lwpostgis on the fly to create a  
new spatial database?  There is a valid need for a template, and the  
more commonly the template is installed, the better for client  
software.  We are hoping to create a situation where someone with  
Mapguide can point it at a windows install of PostgreSQL and just  
start working, without any special magic administrative steps.   
That's where the idea of both having template_postgis and asking that  
it be created as part of the installation comes from.

P

On 2-Jun-07, at 7:46 AM, Stephen Frost wrote:

> * Paul Ramsey (pramsey at refractions.net) wrote:
>> We need a "template_postgis" routine in the distribution because we
>> are going to start recommending that one be created by any packaged
>> version of PostGIS. This will allow client software without access to
>> the server to create "spatialized" database with a CREATE DATABASE
>> sql command, instead of needing to know the location of the magic
>> lwpostgis.so on the server side.
>
> Erm, that doesn't make sense.  Distributions put the lwpostgis.so  
> into a
> specific place, and at least on Debian that's the PG lib directory  
> which
> means you don't need to know the path to it at all.  In either case
> though, the problem of knowing where the lwpostgis.so exists has  
> already
> been solved by the packaging system, it's not like it moves it around,
> nor does it take alot of magic to figure out what that place is.
> Distributions that don't put it into the PG lib directory (and I don't
> know if there are any such) are pretty silly and could stand to have
> that fixed *anyway*, imv.
>
> If that's the only reason for a 'template_postgis' then it should be
> removed entirely.  My original assumption was that it was there to  
> make
> it easier for admins, which can be a worthwhile goal, not to try to
> solve some non-problem.
>
> Regardless, however, I've got no intention (and, indeed, would be
> strongly against) of creating a database of *any* kind during package
> installation under Debian.  There's alot of broken cases where it  
> won't
> work, so you can't assume it'll be there in the end, and in general I
> don't feel it's something which is appropriate for a package like
> PostGIS to *do* anyway.  Make it easy for an admin to create a
> template_gis, fine, but don't recommend distributions automatically do
> it on installation.
>
>> That said, the current thing in the distribution does seem a terrible
>> mess and very debian-specific.
>
> Indeed.  My concern is more with the 'terrible mess' than the
> 'debian-specific' piece of it, of course. ;)
>
> 	Stephen
>
>> On 1-Jun-07, at 6:58 AM, Stephen Frost wrote:
>>
>>> * Mark Cave-Ayland (mark.cave-ayland at ilande.co.uk) wrote:
>>>> AFAICT the following issues remain before we can release 1.2.2:
>>>>
>>>> 1. template_gis - the whole thing needs to be revisited...
>>>
>>> Agreed, 100%.  I don't really see why anything for template_gis
>>> needs to
>>> be or should be done during build but even beyond that it didn't
>>> appear
>>> to be respecting $DESTDIR properly for some reason.  For those
>>> reasons I
>>> removed it from the build for the Debian PostGIS 1.2.1 packages.   
>>> I'm
>>> also not at all convinced it should even be a part of the main  
>>> PostGIS
>>> distribution...
>>>
>>> Also, the 'extras/debian' directory should be removed, it's horribly
>>> outdated, wrong and obsolete.
>>>
>>> 	Thanks!
>>>
>>> 		Stephen