[postgis-devel] liblwgeom.so

[Paul Ramsey]

So, back in mid-month, strk asked:

"Do you agree on having liblwgeom installed systemwide and dynamically
linked starting with PostGIS 2.0 ?"

And there followed, oddly enough, a lot of discussion about the
mechanics of doing it and no discussion at all about the wisdom of
doing it. I would like to backtrack a little and talk about why it
gives me a case of the heebie jeebies.

* Our build is already getting complexer and complexer, and this adds
more complexity, and another autotool to our world.
* Breaking our install into components (this library here, these tools
that depend on it there) adds to the number of places an install can
fail (ha ha! you can't find the library! (note how many times this
happens to us already with libgeos!)) even though in theory this stuff
always "just works"
* We are a PgSQL extension, not a third-party library. If this
actually "succeeds" in getting people using liblwgeom, it also "fails"
in that now we have to, in addition to doing our own work as PostGIS
developers, ensure we don't break other people's work. If we do change
things all the time and people don't use us, then we don't "succeed",
so the "let other people use liblwgeom" argument fails.

I feel like there are non-trivial negatives to this plan and no
strongly articulated positives.

If I were asked to vote on it, I'd be -0. There are lots of things I
hate about the code base now, I can hate one more, if everyone else
thinks it's a dandy idea I won't veto, I have no monopoly on the
truth, but I'd like us to actually poll the group and hear who *does*
think it's a dandy idea and why.

P.