[postgis-devel] About EXTENSION from UNPACKAGED on PostgreSQL 13

[Sandro Santilli]

On Wed, Feb 26, 2020 at 10:37:41AM -0500, Stephen Frost wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> * Sandro Santilli (strk at kbt.io) wrote:
> > On pgsql-hackers we only want to find a future-proof way to "package
> > existing objects into an extension".  If the syntax
> > `CREATE EXTENSION <extname> FROM UNPACKAGED` 
> > has gone, would it be ok for just:
> > `CREATE EXTENSION <extname>`
> > to intercept unpackaged objects and package them ?
> 
> No.  The reason it was removed is because it's not going to be safe to
> do when we have trusted extensions.

This part is not clear to me. You're _assuming_ that the unpackaged--xxx
will not make checks, so you _drop_ support for it ? Can't the normal
extension script also be unsafe for some reason ? Or can't the
unpackaged-xxx script be made safe by the publishers ? Or, as a last
resort.. can't you just mark postgis as UNSAFE and still require
superuser, which would give us the same experience as before ?


> Perhaps it would be possible to
> figure out a way to make it safe, but the reason FROM UNPACKAGED was
> created and existed doesn't apply any more.

Wasn't the reason of existance the ability for people to switch from
non-extension to extension based installs ?

>  That PostGIS has been using
> it for something else entirely is unfortunate, but the way to address
> what PostGIS needs is to talk about that, not talk about how this ugly
> hack used to work and doesn't any more.

Seriously, what was FROM UNPACKAGED meant to be used for ?

--strk;