Re: Adding PGInstaller to the Downloads section

On Aug 29, 2018, at 4:20 AM, Dave Page <dpage@pgadmin.org> wrote:

On Tue, Aug 28, 2018 at 8:22 PM, Jonathan S. Katz <jkatz@postgresql.org> wrote:

On 8/28/18 3:15 PM, Justin Clift wrote:
> On 2018-08-28 20:06, Bruce Momjian wrote:
>> On Tue, Aug 28, 2018 at 08:01:12PM +0100, Justin Clift wrote:
>>> On 2018-08-28 18:32, Bruce Momjian wrote:
>>> >Well, if we have another installer provider who has similar or better
>>> >performance for things we care about, e.g. reliable updates, support,
>>> >_and_ is willing to host the binaries where we want them, we can
>>> switch
>>> >to them.  While it is kind of disloyal to change preferred
>>> providers, we
>>> >also didn't agree to have them be preferred forever, especially if
>>> >someone better shows up.  Of course, switching might be disruptive for
>>> >our installers uses, so we have to consider that too.
>>>
>>> An alternative approach would be for us ("the project") to build
>>> official
>>> installers ourselves, with those being the recommended ones.
>>
>> Uh, we used to do that but found the user support overhead too much.
>
> No worries, was just a thought. :)

Well, a few things has changed since the decision was made, such as
tools, resources, and in some cases, people, so we do have a good
opportunity to reevaluate and see what makes sense. The success of the
yum + apt repositories also provides a template for how to manage &
support the installers.

I do understand it is a bit more involved (i.e. there are interface
components with a lot of these) but perhaps we can do what the other
packages do and install the minimum for supporting a PostgreSQL environment.

You're missing a ton of history here.

PostgreSQL (many, many years ago) used to get a *lot* of negative reactions because it was hard to install an environment that was complete and ready to go, with GUI etc as Windows/Mac users typically expect - in comparison to MySQL which had that nailed.

The original PGInstaller project fixed that for Windows, by bundling PG, pgAdmin and a bunch of other things together. Unfortunately it was an absolute PITA to maintain.

We (various -core folks) agreed with EDB that they would build new installers covering all platforms. These were designed to be much easier to maintain, and added StackBuilder to ease that further by de-coupling many of the components, whilst at the same time continuing to make it much easier for people to add to their installations.

After some years we managed to get the RPM/DEB packaging and download flow much more simplified, to the point that that route is easy (and preferred) for Linux users. FYI, the EDB installers for Linux are no longer being produced for 11.x onwards.

On Windows and Mac the EDB (and equivalent installers from other folks) are still produced and will likely continue to be. First and foremost of course, because they make it very easy to install and get up and running.

That of course, needs to remain the primary focus; and simplifying any packages to a minimum will be a major step backwards.