[postgis-devel] Moving towards a 1.2.2 release?

[Obe, Regina]

Sorry to butt in on this conversation, but thought I would give my vote
on the topic.  I agree with Paul that it should be in all distributions.
Its much easier to explain to newbies, which I deal with often to just
use the template_postgis database to create a spatial database or should
they screw up create another one.

Otherwise my instructions sound like but if you are on debian or blah
blah blah do this or use this special setup package to create.  I mean
if they are going to enable postgis functionality in a database after
they setup a database, they are still going to have to have some clue
where the lwpostgis.sql file is (or at least on windows they do) if they
don't have a template database with all that functionality to copy from.

 Lets not forget that most of us started out as newbies and we don't
want to scare away a potential crowd of users (and potential
contributors) by making the system any more difficult to get up and
running with than it needs to be.

Just my 2 cents,
Regina



-----Original Message-----
From: postgis-devel-bounces at postgis.refractions.net
[mailto:postgis-devel-bounces at postgis.refractions.net] On Behalf Of Paul
Ramsey
Sent: Saturday, June 02, 2007 10:55 AM
To: Stephen Frost
Cc: PostGIS Development Discussion; mleslie at refractions.net
Subject: Re: [postgis-devel] Moving towards a 1.2.2 release?

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

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