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Date: Wed, 08 May 2002 08:35:20 -0400
From: mlw <markw@mohawksoft.com>
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To: PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>,
   Jan Wieck <janwieck@yahoo.com>, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>,
   "Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy@hub.org>, Dann Corbit <DCorbit@connx.com>
Subject: [HACKERS] Path to PostgreSQL portabiliy
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Do we want a Win32 native version of PostgreSQL?

The only reasons *not* to use Cygwin is licensing, installation hassles, and
maybe stability or performance. Therefore, there is no strong technical reason
to defend its removal, only a philosophical one.

The debates on licensing on this list go on for weeks and people feel
passionately about the subject. It seems odd that no one speaks out about the
GNU requirement of cygwin.

If there is a desire to create a PostgreSQL that is "fork" free, then we should
do it now. If now strong desire exists, then we should make an entry in the FAQ
and move on.

If we want to be "portable" (and this should help us with a threading model
later on) we need to cleanup all of the global variables.

PostgreSQL's postmaster should not touch any global variables that are defined
outside something like a pg_global structure and should not touch any static
variables at all. If postmaster initializes a variable that will get cloned on
a fork(), conceptually it is a shared global variable and belongs in
pg_globals. Going all the way and replacing all globals and statics with a
struct should allow threading with TLS. (Thread Local Storage)

Port lib. Regardless where it comes from, the porting code should be a self
contained library, not a list of objects. On Windows, a .DLL can do some things
easier than an application. Also, having a library allows more flexibility as
to how a port is designed.

We should spec out our port interface. This includes file, semaphores, shared
memory, signals/events, process control, IPC, system resources, etc. This will
grow as we re-port to other environments like Windows.

any comments?

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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M22551@postgresql.org Wed May  8 11:41:42 2002
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Date: Wed, 08 May 2002 10:16:16 -0400
From: mlw <markw@mohawksoft.com>
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To: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
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   Jan Wieck <janwieck@yahoo.com>, "Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy@hub.org>,
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Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Path to PostgreSQL portabiliy
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Tom Lane wrote:
> 
> mlw <markw@mohawksoft.com> writes:
> > Port lib. Regardless where it comes from, the porting code should be a
> > self contained library, not a list of objects. On Windows, a .DLL can
> > do some things easier than an application. Also, having a library
> > allows more flexibility as to how a port is designed.
> 
> That may be necessary on Windoze, but on any other platform breaking out
> an essential part of the backend as a library strikes me as a dead loss.
> You create extra risk of installation mistakes, can't-find-library
> startup failures, version mismatch problems, etc, etc --- for zero gain
> that I can see.

It does not need, and probably should not be by default, a shared library under
UNIX. A static library is fine. The issue is whether or not it makes sense to
try and design all porting layers the same, or allow the port engineer the
flexibility to create what they need the way they need to do it. 

A side note:
The "Windoze" comment says a lot Tom. Believe me, I am currently no fan of
Windows, but there is something to be said about doing a good job supporting
such a popular platform, regardless of our personal opinions. When I was
working at DMN, I had to make sure we could find country music and Brittany
Spears. Distasteful, but certainly something that needed to be done.

IMHO, I think a great PostgreSQL implementation for Win32 is a nail in the
coffin for Windows. If we give them a great database, which runs well under
Windows, for free, MSSQL will now have a serious competitor for the medium to
small marketplace.

Once MSSQL has viable cross-platform competition in this space, one less
requirement for Windows will exist. Right now, if you implement on Windows, you
are most likely going to use MSSQL and be stuck there. With a good Win32
PostgreSQL, an engineer can implement on PostgreSQL for Windows, and easily
move it to a "real" environment for stability. 

I see it as an important step.

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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M22561@postgresql.org Wed May  8 15:02:45 2002
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To: Thomas Lockhart <lockhart@fourpalms.org>
cc: mlw <markw@mohawksoft.com>,
   PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>,
   Jan Wieck <janwieck@yahoo.com>, "Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy@hub.org>,
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Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Path to PostgreSQL portabiliy 
In-Reply-To: <3CD9461E.1FDC6344@fourpalms.org> 
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Comments: In-reply-to Thomas Lockhart <lockhart@fourpalms.org>
	message dated "Wed, 08 May 2002 08:37:02 -0700"
Date: Wed, 08 May 2002 11:57:11 -0400
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Thomas Lockhart <lockhart@fourpalms.org> writes:
> 2) If (1) does not exempt the PostgreSQL app from GPL polution, then why
> not distribute PostgreSQL on Windows using a GPL license?

Given the cygwin licensing terms stated at
	http://cygwin.com/licensing.html
it appears to me that we need not open that can of worms (and I'd much
rather not muddy the licensing waters that way, regardless of any
arguments about whether it would hurt or not...)

As near as I can tell, we *could* develop a self-contained installation
package for PG+cygwin without any licensing problem.  So that set of
problems could be solved with a reasonable amount of work.  I'm still
unclear on whether there are serious technical problems (performance,
stability) with using cygwin.

(Actually, even if there are performance or stability problems, an
easily-installable package would still address the needs of people who
want to "try it out" or "get their feet wet".  And maybe that's all we
need to do.  We always have said that we recommend a Unix platform for
production-grade PG installations, and IMNSHO that recommendation would
not change one iota if there were a native rather than cygwin-based
Windows port.  So I'm unconvinced that we have a problem to solve
anyway...)

			regards, tom lane

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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M22572@postgresql.org Wed May  8 15:21:17 2002
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Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Path to PostgreSQL portabiliy
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Thomas Lockhart wrote:
> 
> ...
> > As near as I can tell, we *could* develop a self-contained installation
> > package for PG+cygwin without any licensing problem.
> 
> Right. That was my opinion also. But istm that however the discussion
> settles out, there is a path to success.

These last couple days have really started me thinking about Windows again. I
developed Windows software for over a decade, geez much longer than that, I
wrote my first Windows program using the Windows 1.03 SDK. (I am in a 12 step
program now, but you guys are causing a relapse!)

Listen, here is purely my opinion on the matter, I am speaking from my
experience as a Windows user, developer, and author (Tricks of the Windows 3.1
Masters).

It is useless to spend serious time on a cygwin version. Yea, it is cool and
all, but it won't be used. From the eyes of a Windows user cygwin is a hack and
a mess. An IT guy that only knows Windows will never use it, and if presented
with a program that forces a UNIX like directory tree on their hard drive and
UNIX like tools to manage it, they will delete the program and curse the time
spent installing it.

Performance may also be an issue, I don't know for sure, but it is suspected.
The cygwin fork troubles me as well. It may work, but I would not call it a
"production" technique, how about you? Would you bet your business on cygwin
and a hacked fork()?

No matter what steps you take, cygwin will not be seen by Windows users as
anything but a sloppy/messy/horrible hack. It is a fact of life. You are
welcome to disagree, but I assure you it is true.

>From a usefulness perspective, a cygwin version of PostgreSQL will be nothing
more than a proof of concept, a test bed, or a demo. It will never be used as a
serious database. How much work does that warrant?

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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M22576@postgresql.org Wed May  8 17:06:18 2002
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From: Lamar Owen <lamar.owen@wgcr.org>
To: Thomas Lockhart <lockhart@fourpalms.org>, mlw <markw@mohawksoft.com>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Path to PostgreSQL portabiliy
Date: Wed, 8 May 2002 14:49:39 -0400
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On Wednesday 08 May 2002 11:37 am, Thomas Lockhart wrote:
> 1) cygwin is licensed under GPL. So is GNU/Linux, which provides the
> same APIs as cygwin does. Linux does not pollute application licenses,
> presumably because Linux itself is not *required* to run the

The Linux kernel is not under a pure GPL.  

COPYING in the kernel source says this, prepended to the GPL:
   NOTE! This copyright does *not* cover user programs that use kernel
 services by normal system calls - this is merely considered normal use
 of the kernel, and does *not* fall under the heading of "derived work".
 Also note that the GPL below is copyrighted by the Free Software
 Foundation, but the instance of code that it refers to (the Linux
 kernel) is copyrighted by me and others who actually wrote it.

 Also note that the only valid version of the GPL as far as the kernel
 is concerned is _this_ particular version of the license (ie v2, not
 v2.2 or v3.x or whatever), unless explicitly otherwise stated.

                        Linus Torvalds

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Does cygwin make the same statement?

> 2) If (1) does not exempt the PostgreSQL app from GPL polution, then why
> not distribute PostgreSQL on Windows using a GPL license? 

[snip]

> 3) If (2) is the case, then development could continue under the BSD
> license, since developers could use the BSD-original code for their
> development work. So there is no risk of "backflow polution".

Can PostgreSQL, Inc be the GPL distributor for these purposes, being a 
separate entity from the PostgreSQL Global Development Group?
-- 
Lamar Owen
WGCR Internet Radio
1 Peter 4:11

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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M22580@postgresql.org Wed May  8 17:34:55 2002
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Date: Wed, 08 May 2002 12:53:57 -0700
From: Paul Ramsey <pramsey@refractions.net>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Path to PostgreSQL portabiliy
To: mlw <markw@mohawksoft.com>
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mlw wrote:
>
> No matter what steps you take, cygwin will not be seen by Windows users as
> anything but a sloppy/messy/horrible hack. It is a fact of life. You are
> welcome to disagree, but I assure you it is true.

Just to clarify here: is it confirmed that having the complete cygwin
distribution is a necessary condition to having a running PostgreSQL on
windows? Is it not possible that, having built postgresql with the full
cygwin, it would be possible to make a nice clean setup.exe package
which bundles the postgresql executables, the required cygwin dlls and
other niceties into an easy install package? Given that, I do not think
your putative windows user would care at all about what was going on
under the covers. As long as the install was clean, there were utilities
(pgadmin?) to start working with the database right away, and things
"just worked", the ugliness (or exquisite symmetry... I am not an
expert) of the fork() implementation really would not be an issue :)

Of course, an imaginary beautiful packaging regime hinges on the
possibility of bundling the cygwin api libraries cleanly without
bundling all the rest of the cygwin scruft (unix directory heirarchy,
etc etc). Anyone have any light to shed on cygwin's "packagability"?

P.

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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M22581@postgresql.org Wed May  8 17:58:25 2002
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Date: Wed, 08 May 2002 16:12:17 -0400
From: mlw <markw@mohawksoft.com>
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Paul Ramsey wrote:
> 
> mlw wrote:
> >
> > No matter what steps you take, cygwin will not be seen by Windows users as
> > anything but a sloppy/messy/horrible hack. It is a fact of life. You are
> > welcome to disagree, but I assure you it is true.
> 
> Just to clarify here: is it confirmed that having the complete cygwin
> distribution is a necessary condition to having a running PostgreSQL on
> windows? Is it not possible that, having built postgresql with the full
> cygwin, it would be possible to make a nice clean setup.exe package
> which bundles the postgresql executables, the required cygwin dlls and
> other niceties into an easy install package? Given that, I do not think
> your putative windows user would care at all about what was going on
> under the covers. As long as the install was clean, there were utilities
> (pgadmin?) to start working with the database right away, and things
> "just worked", the ugliness (or exquisite symmetry... I am not an
> expert) of the fork() implementation really would not be an issue :)

Windows users expect to have C:\my programs\postgres as the install location. A
person who has used or looked at MSSQL would expect to deal with the real file
system. The cygwin environment shields the UNIX program from Windows, the
Windows user would expect the program to deal with the system as is.

The Windows user that would install PostgreSQL would expect it to be a real
windows program, but would be savvy enough (and prejudiced enough) to know if
it weren't.

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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M22585@postgresql.org Wed May  8 19:23:09 2002
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From: "Joel Burton" <joel@joelburton.com>
To: "Paul Ramsey" <pramsey@refractions.net>, "mlw" <markw@mohawksoft.com>
cc: "PostgreSQL-development" <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Path to PostgreSQL portabiliy
Date: Wed, 8 May 2002 18:09:41 -0400
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: pgsql-hackers-owner@postgresql.org
> [mailto:pgsql-hackers-owner@postgresql.org]On Behalf Of Paul Ramsey
> Sent: Wednesday, May 08, 2002 3:54 PM
> To: mlw
> Cc: PostgreSQL-development
> Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Path to PostgreSQL portabiliy
>
>
> mlw wrote:
> >
> > No matter what steps you take, cygwin will not be seen by
> Windows users as
> > anything but a sloppy/messy/horrible hack. It is a fact of life. You are
> > welcome to disagree, but I assure you it is true.
>
> Just to clarify here: is it confirmed that having the complete cygwin
> distribution is a necessary condition to having a running PostgreSQL on
> windows? Is it not possible that, having built postgresql with the full
> cygwin, it would be possible to make a nice clean setup.exe package
> which bundles the postgresql executables, the required cygwin dlls and
> other niceties into an easy install package? Given that, I do not think
> your putative windows user would care at all about what was going on
> under the covers. As long as the install was clean, there were utilities
> (pgadmin?) to start working with the database right away, and things
> "just worked", the ugliness (or exquisite symmetry... I am not an
> expert) of the fork() implementation really would not be an issue :)
>
> Of course, an imaginary beautiful packaging regime hinges on the
> possibility of bundling the cygwin api libraries cleanly without
> bundling all the rest of the cygwin scruft (unix directory heirarchy,
> etc etc). Anyone have any light to shed on cygwin's "packagability"?

Certainly, we don't need all of cygwin (eg bison, gcc, perl, et al). We'd
need the dll, sh, rm, and few other things. I'm not sure if it would need to
be in the standard cygwin file structure; I know that you can reconfigure
this when you use cygwin (I used to). In any event, instead of having to
have a novice pick & guess which of >100 packages they need, we could put
together the 5 or 6 they need.

I'm not sure I agree entirely with mlw: some Windows admins will be afraid
of cygwin, but, I'll bet more than a few won't even notice that its being
used (especially if we can change the dir names, provide windows shortcuts
to the commands like initdb, create database, pg_ctl, etc., which would be
trivial to do).

Still unanswered is real data on whether cygwin would be good for serious
production use by real people. However, for the test/play/try-out model, I
think cygwin would be a fine solution, and wouldn't (shouldn't?) require too
much work.

- J.


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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M22603@postgresql.org Thu May  9 03:24:18 2002
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To: mlw <markw@mohawksoft.com>, Lee Kindness <lkindness@csl.co.uk>
From: Lincoln Yeoh <lyeoh@pop.jaring.my>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Path to PostgreSQL portabiliy
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Who really is your target "market" on the windows platform? Microsoft 
Access users (many)? MySQL users(insignificant?)? MSSQL (many)?

Assuming that the postgresql team isn't getting lots of money or resources 
to do it. I don't see why you would want to invest a lot to support windows 
from a long term point of view. Windows can be a costly platform to support.

Because if you become a serious threat, Microsoft can rip the rug from 
beneath you any chance they get. Also Microsoft WILL always change their 
APIs. They're not stupid. If Microsoft freezes their APIs they will end up 
like "yet another BIOS manufacturer", and bye bye profit margins. Microsoft 
will strive to keep it a proprietary AND changing API.

Windows is rather different operationally. Automating vacuum etc on windows 
is going to be different. Starting postgresql as a service is going to be 
different as well. Same for uninstalling. So support requests are going to 
be different.

If your target market is consumer - Windows consumer users also have 
different expectations. Most will want nicer GUIs (those that don't care 
won't mind running Postgresql elsewhere).

BTW if your target market is a bit higher end - typically those that "must 
use" windows also "must use" MSSQL/Oracle/etc. You will thus have to build 
brand recognition for Postgresql on Windows.

All this will cost you.

That said, is it easier to support only Windows NT/2000 and forget about 
Win9x? The bigger dbs don't support win9x either (how does Oracle/DB2 
support NT? They seem to work ok). Leave MySQL to the Win9x people ;). BTW 
does MySQL really perform OK on Win9x?

Forget the Cygwin approach. Is there really a market for that? Unless 
things have got a lot easier, installing Cygwin is like installing a new 
O/S just to install your app. And installing and learning a new system has 
got to be one of the major barriers, otherwise people will either buy a new 
USD500 1.5+ GHz pc or use VMware+BSD/Linux+Postgresql ;).

Cheerio,
Link.

At 11:53 AM 5/8/02 -0400, mlw wrote:
>writing software for over 20 years now, and sometimes you just have to hold
>your nose. It would be nice if we could code what we want, the way we want, in
>the language we want, on the platforms we want.
>
>Windows represents a HUGE user base, it also represents a platform for which a
>real good native PostgreSQL should do well. There are, to my knowledge, no 
>good
>and free databases available for Windows.
>
>PostgreSQL on Windows could be very cool as a serious poster child for why
>open-source is the way to go.



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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M22605@postgresql.org Thu May  9 03:42:59 2002
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Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Path to PostgreSQL portabiliy
Date: Thu, 9 May 2002 08:42:18 +0100
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dann Corbit [mailto:DCorbit@connx.com] 
> Sent: 09 May 2002 00:31
> To: PostgreSQL-development
> Subject: Re: Path to PostgreSQL portabiliy
> 
> 
> If you have a Win32 workstation...
> Look here:
> http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin/
> 
> Then click on the thing that says "Install Now" (Looks like a 
> black "C" with a green tongue).
> 
> after a small boatload of clicks, you will see a Window 
> labeled "Cygwin Setup". Under +All you will find...
> 	+Admin
> 	+Archive
> 	+Base
> 	+Database
> 
> Click on the plus sign next to the Database category.
> 
> You will see:
> 	7.2.1-1  [options] [Bin] [Src] [Package] posgresql: 
> PostgreSQL Data Base Management System
> 
> In other words, they already have an automated installation 
> procedure for PostgreSQL if you are using Cygwin.

The last time I tried that (coupla months ago) it listed the versions of
the packages in reverse order, so I spent about 15 very tedious minutes
making sure that I have the latest version of all the packages I wanted
selected.

Then I spent an hour or 2 battling with ntsec and initdb on my laptop
(logged onto, but disconnected from the domain). After that I gave up
and went back to my very old release that works fine.

The point I'm trying to make is that if I, as a not inexperienced
sysadmin of both Windows and Unix systems (not to mention PostgreSQL
which I like to think I'm fairly familiar with) has this trouble, what
impression is that going to give the first time user, who's probably
going to go elsewhere at the first sign of trouble?

Regards, Dave.

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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M22628@postgresql.org Thu May  9 10:26:16 2002
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Date: Thu, 09 May 2002 10:05:03 -0400
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Jan Wieck wrote:
> 
> Tom Lane wrote:
> > "Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy@hub.org> writes:
> > > On Tue, 7 May 2002, Tom Lane wrote:
> > >> It'd be worth trying to understand cygwin issues in detail before we
> > >> sign up to do and support a native Windows port.
> >
> > > Actually, there are licensing issues involved ... we could never put a
> > > 'windows binary' up for anon-ftp, since to distribute it would require the
> > > cygwin.dll to be distributed, and to do that, there is a licensing cost
> > > ... of course, I guess we could require ppl to download cygwin seperately,
> > > install that, then install the binary over top of that ...
> >
> > <<itch>>  And how much development time are we supposed to expend to
> > avoid that?
> >
> > Give me a technical case for avoiding Cygwin, and maybe I can get
> > excited about it.  I'm not planning to lift a finger on the basis
> > of licensing though... after all, Windows users are accustomed to
> > paying for software, no?
> 
>     Nobody  asked  you  to lift any of your fingers. A few people
>     (including me) just see  value  in  a  native  Windows  port,
>     kicking out the Cygwin requirement.
> 
>     I have the impression you never did use Cygwin. I did, thanks
>     but no thanks.

I have used the cygwin version too. It is a waste of time. No Windows user will
ever accept it. No windows-only user is going to use the cygwin tools. From a
production stand point, would anyone reading this trust their data to
PostgreSQL running on cygwin? Think about it, if you wouldn't, why would anyone
else.

I think, and I know people are probably sick of me spouting opinions, that if
you want a Windows presence for PostgreSQL, then we should write a real Win32
version.

If the global/static variables which are initialized by the postmaster are
moved to a structure, we can should be able to remove the fork() requirement
and port to a Win32 native system.

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To: mlw <markw@mohawksoft.com>
cc: Jan Wieck <janwieck@yahoo.com>, "Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy@hub.org>,
   PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] How much work is a native Windows application? 
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References: <200205091344.g49DiBp01273@saturn.janwieck.net> <3CDA820F.136D65F5@mohawksoft.com>
Comments: In-reply-to mlw <markw@mohawksoft.com>
	message dated "Thu, 09 May 2002 10:05:03 -0400"
Date: Thu, 09 May 2002 10:25:43 -0400
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From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
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mlw <markw@mohawksoft.com> writes:
> I have used the cygwin version too. It is a waste of time. No Windows user will
> ever accept it. No windows-only user is going to use the cygwin tools.

With decent packaging, no windows-only user would even know we have
cygwin in there.  The above argument is just plain irrelevant.  The real
point is that we need a nice clean friendly GUI for both installation
and administration --- and AFAICS that will take about the same amount of
work to write whether the server requires cygwin internally or not.

Rather than expending largely-pointless work on internal rewrites of
the server, people who care about this issue ought to be thinking about
the GUI problems.

> From a production stand point, would anyone reading this trust their
> data to PostgreSQL running on cygwin?

I wouldn't trust my data to *any* database running on a Microsoft OS.
Period.  The above argument thus doesn't impress me at all, especially
when it's being made without offering a shred of evidence that cygwin
contributes any major degree of instability.

I am especially unhappy about the prospect of major code revisions
and development time spent on chasing this rather than improving our
performance and stability on Unix-type OSes.  I agree with the comment
someone else made: that's just playing Microsoft's game.

			regards, tom lane

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TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster

From pgsql-hackers-owner+M22634@postgresql.org Thu May  9 11:12:12 2002
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Date: Thu, 09 May 2002 10:55:01 -0400
From: mlw <markw@mohawksoft.com>
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   PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] How much work is a native Windows application?
References: <200205091344.g49DiBp01273@saturn.janwieck.net> <3CDA820F.136D65F5@mohawksoft.com> <19330.1020954343@sss.pgh.pa.us>
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Tom Lane wrote:
> With decent packaging, no windows-only user would even know we have
> cygwin in there.  The above argument is just plain irrelevant.  The real
> point is that we need a nice clean friendly GUI for both installation
> and administration --- and AFAICS that will take about the same amount of
> work to write whether the server requires cygwin internally or not.

Can a cygwin version of PostgreSQL see the native file system, like: C:\My
Database, D:\postgres?

> > From a production stand point, would anyone reading this trust their
> > data to PostgreSQL running on cygwin?
> 
> I wouldn't trust my data to *any* database running on a Microsoft OS.

That is a prejudice that is affecting your judgment. Many people do trust
Windows, do I? No, but a lot of people do. People have trusted their businesses
on Windows NT/2K/XP, many are still doing so. We want these people to use
PostgreSQL, so when they see the error in their ways, they have a way out.


> The above argument thus doesn't impress me at all, especially
> when it's being made without offering a shred of evidence that cygwin
> contributes any major degree of instability.

>From a software development standpoint, I am VERY uncomfortable with the
technique of a user space program copying its writeable memory to another
process's. It may work until Microsoft changes something with the next version
of IE. What about anti-virus software, cygwin has problems with them, and you
have to have anti-virus software on Windows.

On top of that, the time spent copying the whole process is too long, and it
forces real memory to be allocated and initialized at process startup. 

So, the cygwin fork() will cause PostgreSQL to be slower and use more memory
than a native version, and will not co-exist well with anti-virus software.

> 
> I am especially unhappy about the prospect of major code revisions
> and development time spent on chasing this rather than improving our
> performance and stability on Unix-type OSes.  I agree with the comment
> someone else made: that's just playing Microsoft's game.

Maybe is is playing "Microsoft's Game" but the end result will be a program
that can seriously compete with MSSQL on Windows, and provide a REAL migration
path to UNIX. 

Many developers use MSSQL because they "have it" in MSDN, so to them, it is
free. Once they develop something using it, they are tied to Windows. When it
comes time to deploy their pet project, the company has to cough up the price
of the server.

A native, friendly, Win32 PostgreSQL that works the same on Windows as it does
on FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris, etc. Will offer the developer real options away
from Windows.

Also: I don't think it needs to be a major rewrite, no strategy needs to
change, it is basically renaming variables, i.e. my_global_var becomes
pg_globals.my_global_var.

Once that is done, a port writer can do what ever they need to do to get that
structure to the child correctly. As an exercise, I bet if we did this, we
would find bugs which are lurking, as yet unfound.

Besides, the discipline of using a globals structure will improve the code
base. Don't you agree?

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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M22635@postgresql.org Thu May  9 11:26:08 2002
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Date: Thu, 09 May 2002 08:13:17 -0700
From: Thomas Lockhart <lockhart@fourpalms.org>
Organization: Yes
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cc: Lee Kindness <lkindness@csl.co.uk>, Jan Wieck <janwieck@yahoo.com>,
   Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>, "Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy@hub.org>,
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Subject: Re: [HACKERS] How much work is a native Windows application?
References: <29206.1020833367@sss.pgh.pa.us>
			<200205091344.g49DiBp01273@saturn.janwieck.net> <15578.33799.700751.945380@kelvin.csl.co.uk> <3CDA866D.25E7FADF@mohawksoft.com>
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...
> PostgreSQL's feature set and price ($0), with a good installer, would do VERY
> well.

That may be (I'd like to think so!).

We've identified at least a couple of barriers to folks running
PostgreSQL on Windows. The installer and GUI issue needs to be solved no
matter what, and we *could* have a version running on Windows with just
those things in place.

imho if we are going down the path, we need to take the first steps. And
those do *not* require code rewrites to do so (or at least don't appear
to).

If we had a package available for Windows -- with some developers such
as yourself supporting it -- then we could talk about putting more
resources into supporting that platform better. But the perception of at
least some of the key developers (including myself) is that *if* we did
the code rewrite, and *if* we spent the effort to end up as a native on
Windows, then we *very well might* be an unreliable database on an
unreliable platform.

istm that getting a well packaged system running now, then being able to
identify *only cygwin* as the barrier to better reliability would get
more support for changes in the backend code.

And if we were working toward some ability to do threading anyway (I
don't see that in the near future, but we've talked in the past about
structuring the query engine around "tuple sources" which could then be
distributed across threads or across machines) then maybe the next step
is easier.

My 2c...

                        - Thomas

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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M22644@postgresql.org Thu May  9 12:57:33 2002
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From: Jan Wieck <janwieck@yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <200205091637.g49GbGx01621@saturn.janwieck.net>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] How much work is a native Windows application?
In-Reply-To: <3CDA820F.136D65F5@mohawksoft.com> from mlw at "May 9, 2002 10:05:03
	am"
To: mlw <markw@mohawksoft.com>
Date: Thu, 9 May 2002 12:37:16 -0400 (EDT)
cc: Jan Wieck <janwieck@yahoo.com>, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>,
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mlw wrote:
> I think, and I know people are probably sick of me spouting opinions, that if
> you want a Windows presence for PostgreSQL, then we should write a real Win32
> version.
>
> If the global/static variables which are initialized by the postmaster are
> moved to a structure, we can should be able to remove the fork() requirement
> and port to a Win32 native system.

    My  opinion  here is that until May 1998 Postgres did exec(),
    so it was clean and okay for CreateProcess() up to then. Just
    because  we  optimized  it  for  the copy-on-write behaviour,
    modern Unix kernels do with fork()  only,  is  NO  reason  to
    accept  sloppy  coding.  The  Postmaster and the backend have
    different responsibilities. In fact, I  still  consider  them
    beeing   different  programs  even  if  they  reside  in  one
    executable. Mixing global variables of one with the other  is
    wrong.


Jan

--

#======================================================================#
# It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than for being right. #
# Let's break this rule - forgive me.                                  #
#================================================== JanWieck@Yahoo.com #



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TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster

From pgsql-hackers-owner+M22662@postgresql.org Thu May  9 14:47:23 2002
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Date: Thu, 09 May 2002 14:23:02 -0400
From: mlw <markw@mohawksoft.com>
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cc: PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] How much work is a native Windows application?
References: <200205091344.g49DiBp01273@saturn.janwieck.net> <3CDA820F.136D65F5@mohawksoft.com> <20020509170233.2DC5A38CB3@cbbrowne.com>  <3CDAB0B3.C7375A12@mohawksoft.com> <20020509174604.89E5938D1A@cbbrowne.com>
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cbbrowne@cbbrowne.com wrote:
> 
> > cbbrowne@cbbrowne.com wrote:
> >>> I think, and I know people are probably sick of me spouting
> >>> opinions, that if you want a Windows presence for PostgreSQL, then
> >>> we should write a real Win32 version.
> >>
> >> The crucial wrong word is the word "we."
> 
> >> If _you_ want a Windows presence, then _you_ should write a real
> >> Win32 version.  That clearly attaches responsibility to someone who
> >> is interested.
> 
> > I have already said that I am willing to write the pieces for a
> > Windows port.  The issue is changes in PostgreSQL required to do it.
> 
> No, I don't think you understand.
> 
> If you're planning to do a port, then _all_ changes are your
> responsibility.  Nobody ought to need to change PostgreSQL in order for
> you to write a Windows port; that, in fact, would be a waste of time,
> having several people working on something that should probably be done
> by one person.

Without buy-in from the group, there is no point in me wasting my time doing
all the work necessary. I'm not interested in making Mark's special version of
PostgreSQL.

If we can agree on a strategy and a course, then it is worth doing. If all the
changes made fall on the floor because the group does not like them, then I
wasted my time. Got it?

Also, doing the Windows portions of the code will represent a significant
investment of my time. I'm not interested in doing a lot of work on a shoddy
project. If you ask the core group to put out a crappy version of PostgreSQL
for a UNIX, they would fight long and hard against it. Why should we be willing
to produce a crappy version for Windows, just because the people here don't
like Windows.

I don't care about Solaris, but I understand WHY it is important to make
PostgreSQL work well on it. I don't understand why the people in this group
don't see the same purpose for a Windows port. To be honest, I think a good
Windows port will do wonders for PostgreSQL's acceptance.

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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M22680@postgresql.org Thu May  9 17:57:11 2002
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Subject: Re: [HACKERS] How much work is a native Windows application?
From: Hannu Krosing <hannu@tm.ee>
To: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
cc: mlw <markw@mohawksoft.com>, Jan Wieck <janwieck@yahoo.com>,
   "Marc G.  Fournier" <scrappy@hub.org>,
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On Thu, 2002-05-09 at 19:25, Tom Lane wrote:
> mlw <markw@mohawksoft.com> writes:
> > I have used the cygwin version too. It is a waste of time. No Windows user will
> > ever accept it. No windows-only user is going to use the cygwin tools.
> 
> With decent packaging, no windows-only user would even know we have
> cygwin in there.  The above argument is just plain irrelevant.  The real
> point is that we need a nice clean friendly GUI for both installation
> and administration --- and AFAICS that will take about the same amount of
> work to write whether the server requires cygwin internally or not.

<evil grin>
We can go the Oracle way and write a 200MB cross-platform java installer
requiring and exact version of java runtime 
</evil grin>

> Rather than expending largely-pointless work on internal rewrites of
> the server, people who care about this issue ought to be thinking about
> the GUI problems.

pgAccess is quite nice (Disclaimer: I'm not a windows weenie, I run it
inside vmware/win98 IE browser test environment on my Linux workstation
;). 

Why not just bundle what we've got ?

> > From a production stand point, would anyone reading this trust their
> > data to PostgreSQL running on cygwin?
> 
> I wouldn't trust my data to *any* database running on a Microsoft OS.
> Period. 

Do we support Xenix and SCO ?

> The above argument thus doesn't impress me at all, especially
> when it's being made without offering a shred of evidence that cygwin
> contributes any major degree of instability.

>From the comments here it seems to be either cygwin or more likely
cygipc

> I am especially unhappy about the prospect of major code revisions
> and development time spent on chasing this rather than improving our
> performance and stability on Unix-type OSes.  I agree with the comment
> someone else made: that's just playing Microsoft's game.

Not!

I think that this thread is mostly about coordinating code and interface
cleanups that are likely beneficial for both *NIX and non-*NIX platforms
mainly
 * cleaner support for semaphores
 * separating shared and per-process data
 * process creation
 * (file operations)
 * (init and service scripts)
if done properly none of these will degrade code quality nor
performance.

Also, having a clean interface for those will not only enable any
interested party to make windows/BeOS/OSX/QNX binaries with less effort,
it will most likely make it easier make use of advances in *NIX world
like AIO, multiprocessor systems, NUMA and distributed systems, and just
make things more robust and reliable by making code inspection easier.

---------------
Hannu



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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M22694@postgresql.org Thu May  9 21:02:16 2002
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From: "Ernesto Gutierrez" <egutierrez@eldergriffon.org>
To: "mlw" <markw@mohawksoft.com>, "Tom Lane" <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
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References: <200205091344.g49DiBp01273@saturn.janwieck.net> <3CDA820F.136D65F5@mohawksoft.com> <19330.1020954343@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] How much work is a native Windows application? 
Date: Thu, 9 May 2002 17:59:55 -0700
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Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> writes:

> mlw <markw@mohawksoft.com> writes:
> > I have used the cygwin version too. It is a waste of time. No Windows
user will
> > ever accept it. No windows-only user is going to use the cygwin tools.
>
> With decent packaging, no windows-only user would even know we have
> cygwin in there.  The above argument is just plain irrelevant.  The real
> point is that we need a nice clean friendly GUI for both installation
> and administration --- and AFAICS that will take about the same amount of
> work to write whether the server requires cygwin internally or not.

I'm afraid I agree with mlw, Tom. I don't think the problem ends at the GUI,
although for many people it would.  The issue extends at least also to
support and troubleshooting.  In a production environment, I have a better
chance of figuring out what's going wrong with an application written
natively for an operating system dealing directly with that operating
system. I would take a dim view of using PostgreSQL running on cygwin unless
I had extensive experience doing it, or if there were no other alternative.

> > From a production stand point, would anyone reading this trust their
> > data to PostgreSQL running on cygwin?
>
> I wouldn't trust my data to *any* database running on a Microsoft OS.
> Period.  The above argument thus doesn't impress me at all, especially
> when it's being made without offering a shred of evidence that cygwin
> contributes any major degree of instability.

If you could prove to me that cygwin doesn't contribute *any* instability,
I'd still be pretty worried, probably for the same reasons that you don't
trust any Microsoft OS. There are increased chances that something could go
critically wrong, particularly in an environment fundamentally different. I
think mlw's basic point is quite valid, that PG+cygwin will not ever find
favor with decision-makers who are used to Windows systems.  Suspicion of
the other environment's foibles is common, and goes both ways.

> I am especially unhappy about the prospect of major code revisions
> and development time spent on chasing this rather than improving our
> performance and stability on Unix-type OSes.  I agree with the comment
> someone else made: that's just playing Microsoft's game.

There I don't deny you may be right.

Ernie Gutierrez
Walnut Creek, CA


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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M22642@postgresql.org Thu May  9 12:49:06 2002
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Date: Thu, 09 May 2002 09:16:35 -0700
From: Barry Lind <barry@xythos.com>
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cc: "Henshall, Stuart - WCP" <SHenshall@westcountrypublications.co.uk>,
   Thomas Lockhart <lockhart@fourpalms.org>, mlw <markw@mohawksoft.com>,
   PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>,
   Jan Wieck <janwieck@yahoo.com>, "Marc G.  Fournier" <scrappy@hub.org>,
   Dann Corbit <DCorbit@connx.com>, Joel Burton <joel@joelburton.com>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] PG+Cygwin Production Experience (was RE: Path to PostgreSQL
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I have found this whole thread very interesting (I'm still not sure 
where it is going though :-).  But let me throw in some of my thoughts.

A windows version of postgres (whether native of cygwin based) is 
important.  I have many developers with windows as their desktop OS and 
they have a postgres db installed to do development work.  Postgres on 
cygwin is fine for this need.  While I may not trust it in a production 
environment it is certainly good enough for development.

A second use we have for postgres on windows is in evals of our product. 
  We provide an eval version of our software as an InstallShield 
installed .exe that includes our code, postgres and the necessary cygwin 
parts.  People doing evals just want to install the eval on their 
everyday machine (most likely running windows) and it needs to be dead 
simple to install.  This can be done with postgres and cygwin.  In this 
example again the current postgres+cygwin works well enough for our 
evals.  Again I wouldn't run the production version in this environment, 
but it is good enough for an eval.

Our eval does show that it is possible to repackage postgres plus the 
parts of cygwin it needs into a nice installer and have it work.  (It is 
a lot of work but is certainly possible).  In fact in our eval install 
we even use cygrunsrv to install postgres as a windows service.

The biggest problem we have had is the fact that the utility scripts 
(like pg_ctl, createdb, etc) are all shell scripts that call a whole 
host of other utilities.  It is pretty straight forward to package up 
the postgres executable and the libraries it needs from cygwin.  It is a 
whole different problem making sure you have a standard unix style shell 
environment with all the utilities installed so that you can run the 
shell scripts.

thanks,
--Barry

Tom Lane wrote:
> "Henshall, Stuart - WCP" <SHenshall@westcountrypublications.co.uk> writes:
> 
>>Cygwin is not the only additon needed, cygipc will also be needed (GPL)
>>(see: http://www.neuro.gatech.edu/users/cwilson/cygutils/cygipc/index.html )
> 
> 
> Good point, but is this a requirement that we could get rid of, now that
> we have the SysV IPC stuff somewhat isolated?  AFAICT cygipc provides
> the SysV IPC API (shmget, semget, etc) --- but if there are usable
> equivalents in the basic Cygwin environment, we could probably use them
> now.
> 
> Considering how often we see the forgot-to-start-cygipc mistake,
> removing this requirement would be a clear win.
> 
> 			regards, tom lane
> 
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> 



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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M22665@postgresql.org Thu May  9 15:30:11 2002
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Subject: Re: [HACKERS] PG+Cygwin Production Experience (was RE: Path to PostgreSQL
In-Reply-To: <3CDAA0E3.5060706@xythos.com> from Barry Lind at "May 9, 2002 09:16:35
	am"
To: Barry Lind <barry@xythos.com>
Date: Thu, 9 May 2002 15:20:23 -0400 (EDT)
cc: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>,
   "Henshall, Stuart - WCP" <SHenshall@westcountrypublications.co.uk>,
   Thomas Lockhart <lockhart@fourpalms.org>, mlw <markw@mohawksoft.com>,
   PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>,
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Barry Lind wrote:
> I have found this whole thread very interesting (I'm still not sure
> where it is going though :-).  But let me throw in some of my thoughts.
>
> A windows version of postgres (whether native of cygwin based) is
> important.  I have many developers with windows as their desktop OS and
> they have a postgres db installed to do development work.  Postgres on
> cygwin is fine for this need.  While I may not trust it in a production
> environment it is certainly good enough for development.
>
> A second use we have for postgres on windows is in evals of our product.
>   We provide an eval version of our software as an InstallShield
> installed .exe that includes our code, postgres and the necessary cygwin
> parts.  People doing evals just want to install the eval on their
> everyday machine (most likely running windows) and it needs to be dead
> simple to install.  This can be done with postgres and cygwin.  In this
> example again the current postgres+cygwin works well enough for our
> evals.  Again I wouldn't run the production version in this environment,
> but it is good enough for an eval.
>
> Our eval does show that it is possible to repackage postgres plus the
> parts of cygwin it needs into a nice installer and have it work.  (It is
> a lot of work but is certainly possible).  In fact in our eval install
> we even use cygrunsrv to install postgres as a windows service.
>
> The biggest problem we have had is the fact that the utility scripts
> (like pg_ctl, createdb, etc) are all shell scripts that call a whole
> host of other utilities.  It is pretty straight forward to package up
> the postgres executable and the libraries it needs from cygwin.  It is a
> whole different problem making sure you have a standard unix style shell
> environment with all the utilities installed so that you can run the
> shell scripts.

    Do  I  read  this  right? You wrap the binary eval version of
    your product, the binary PostgreSQL and CygWin including some
    of  the utility programs into one InstallShield .exe and ship
    that?

    Hmmm, PostgreSQL's license is totally  fine  with  that.  And
    your  program  is your program. But as far as I know bundling
    with CygWin like this costs money. So you pay license fees to
    RedHat for shipping eval copies of your product and don't see
    any value in a native Windows port?  Nobel,  nobel,  or  does
    your product have such an outstanding eval/sell ratio that it
    doesn't matter?


Jan

>
> thanks,
> --Barry
>
> Tom Lane wrote:
> > "Henshall, Stuart - WCP" <SHenshall@westcountrypublications.co.uk> writes:
> >
> >>Cygwin is not the only additon needed, cygipc will also be needed (GPL)
> >>(see: http://www.neuro.gatech.edu/users/cwilson/cygutils/cygipc/index.html )
> >
> >
> > Good point, but is this a requirement that we could get rid of, now that
> > we have the SysV IPC stuff somewhat isolated?  AFAICT cygipc provides
> > the SysV IPC API (shmget, semget, etc) --- but if there are usable
> > equivalents in the basic Cygwin environment, we could probably use them
> > now.
> >
> > Considering how often we see the forgot-to-start-cygipc mistake,
> > removing this requirement would be a clear win.
> >
> >            regards, tom lane
> >
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> > TIP 3: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate
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> > message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
> >
>
>
>
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--

#======================================================================#
# It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than for being right. #
# Let's break this rule - forgive me.                                  #
#================================================== JanWieck@Yahoo.com #



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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M22643@postgresql.org Thu May  9 12:55:39 2002
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Date: Thu, 9 May 2002 10:34:58 -0600 (MDT)
From: Scott Marlowe <scott.marlowe@ihs.com>
To: PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: [HACKERS] Issues tangential to win32 support
In-Reply-To: <3CDA820F.136D65F5@mohawksoft.com>
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There are some issues that the whole idea of a win32 port should bring up.  
One of them is whether or not postgresql should be rewritten as a 
multi-threaded app.

If postgresql will never be rewritten as a multi-threaded app, then 
performance under Windows is likely to ALWAYS be slow, since that 
multi-thread is the preferred model for good performance on W32.  note 
that many Unixes prefer multi-threaded models as well (Solaris comes to 
mind) so there's the possibility that a multi-threaded postgresql could 
enjoy better performance on more than just windows.

If postgresql IS going to eventually be multi-threaded, then the whole 
win32 port should probably be delayed until then, since it would solve 
many of the issues of fork() versus createprocess().

Just my thoughts on it.

Scott


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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M22660@postgresql.org Thu May  9 14:31:54 2002
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Date: Thu, 9 May 2002 12:13:59 -0600 (MDT)
From: Scott Marlowe <scott.marlowe@ihs.com>
To: Jan Wieck <janwieck@yahoo.com>
cc: PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Issues tangential to win32 support
In-Reply-To: <200205091751.g49HpTi01846@saturn.janwieck.net>
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On Thu, 9 May 2002, Jan Wieck wrote:

> > If postgresql IS going to eventually be multi-threaded, then the whole
> > win32 port should probably be delayed until then, since it would solve
> > many of the issues of fork() versus createprocess().
> 
>     If multi-threading is the plan, then there is  light  at  the
>     end of the tunnel ... the upcoming train...

That's a bit extreme don't you think?  I'm not fan of multi-threading as 
the one true way, and since I use linux as my server for postgresql, there 
is no gain for me in a multi-threaded model.  In fact, I'd prefer 
postgresql stay multi-process for robustness.

BUT, if there are plans to go multi-thread, or could be plans, then those 
should take priority over how to port to windows, since making postgresql 
multi-threaded will change it so much as to make the current "how do we 
port to windows" thread meaningless.

One of the primary reasons given for avoiding cygwin is that postgresql 
runs so slowly under it on windows, but I submit that it probably won't 
run a heck of a lot faster if it was written as a native app as long as 
it's running as a multi-process design.  Since there's probably no great 
gain to be had from moving it out from under cygwin, why bother?

My vote would be to stay multi-process and Unix compatible.  I have no 
real use for windows as a server, and do NOT want to sacrifice the 
performance / reliability I have with postgresql under Linux for a windows 
port.




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Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Issues tangential to win32 support
From: Hannu Krosing <hannu@tm.ee>
To: Dann Corbit <DCorbit@connx.com>
cc: PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
	<D90A5A6C612A39408103E6ECDD77B82920CE10@voyager.corporate.connx.com>
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On Fri, 2002-05-10 at 02:33, Dann Corbit wrote:
> 
> It took a few hundred man hours to do it. 

About 2-8 weeks for one full time programmer ?

> I see the whole Win32 port as
> a non issue.  Several parties have already completed it (including the
> place where I work -- CONNX Solutions Inc.).  If we did not do it or all
> parties who already did it were hit by a comet or something, someone
> else would accomplish it.  It isn't trivial but it isn't impossible
> either.  If a need is large enough, someone will manage it.  The need is
> large enough.  Ergo...

Do you know which of these run ((reasonably) well) on win9x ?

> Here are some other things related:
> 
> A ready to go Win32 PosgreSQL package:
> http://www.dbexperts.net/postgresql

Perhaps we should back up and let dbexperts et.al. recover their costs
and after that repent and commit changes back to main tree ;)

## insert a little ad-hominem attack to everyone objecting a native 
## win32 port as owning stock in some win32-pg-selling company 

BTW, do they have an evaluation version or do they think that people
would in that case evaluate on win32 and then buy a cheap linux box for
$495.- :)

--------------------
Hannu



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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M22676@postgresql.org Thu May  9 17:36:50 2002
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Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Issues tangential to win32 support
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Thread-Topic: [HACKERS] Issues tangential to win32 support
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From: "Dann Corbit" <DCorbit@connx.com>
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Hannu Krosing [mailto:hannu@tm.ee]
> Sent: Thursday, May 09, 2002 12:10 PM
> To: Jan Wieck
> Cc: Scott Marlowe; PostgreSQL-development
> Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Issues tangential to win32 support
> 
> 
> On Thu, 2002-05-09 at 22:51, Jan Wieck wrote:
> > Scott Marlowe wrote:
> > > There are some issues that the whole idea of a win32 port 
> should bring up.
> > > One of them is whether or not postgresql should be rewritten as a
> > > multi-threaded app.
> > 
> >     Please, don't add this one to it.
> > 
> >     I'm  all for the native Windows port, yes, but I've discussed
> >     the multi-thread questions for days  at  Great  Bridge,  then
> >     again with my new employer, with people on shows and whatnot.
> > 
> >     Anything in the whole  backend  is  designed  with  a  multi-
> >     process  model in mind.  You'll not do that in any reasonable
> >     amount of time.
> 
> IIRC you are replying to the man who _has_ actually don this ?
> 
> Perhaps using an unreasonable amount of time but still ... :)

It took a few hundred man hours to do it.  I see the whole Win32 port as
a non issue.  Several parties have already completed it (including the
place where I work -- CONNX Solutions Inc.).  If we did not do it or all
parties who already did it were hit by a comet or something, someone
else would accomplish it.  It isn't trivial but it isn't impossible
either.  If a need is large enough, someone will manage it.  The need is
large enough.  Ergo...

Here are some other things related:

A ready to go Win32 PosgreSQL package:
http://www.dbexperts.net/postgresql

An open source project to productize PostgreSQL for Windows (has gone
nowhere so far):
http://gborg.postgresql.org/project/winpackage/projdisplay.php

A native Win32 port accomplished by a Japanese Group:
http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA023283/PostgreSQLe.html
If you look under the "Gists for Patch" it contains exactly the same
tasks that CONNX Solutions Inc. had to accomplish in every case.

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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M22677@postgresql.org Thu May  9 17:48:03 2002
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Date: Thu, 09 May 2002 17:41:29 -0400
From: mlw <markw@mohawksoft.com>
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To: Dann Corbit <DCorbit@connx.com>
cc: PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Issues tangential to win32 support
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Dann Corbit wrote:
> It took a few hundred man hours to do it.  I see the whole Win32 port as
> a non issue.  Several parties have already completed it (including the
> place where I work -- CONNX Solutions Inc.).  If we did not do it or all
> parties who already did it were hit by a comet or something, someone
> else would accomplish it.  It isn't trivial but it isn't impossible
> either.  If a need is large enough, someone will manage it.  The need is
> large enough.  Ergo...
> 
> Here are some other things related:
> 
> A ready to go Win32 PosgreSQL package:
> http://www.dbexperts.net/postgresql
> 
> An open source project to productize PostgreSQL for Windows (has gone
> nowhere so far):
> http://gborg.postgresql.org/project/winpackage/projdisplay.php
> 
> A native Win32 port accomplished by a Japanese Group:
> http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA023283/PostgreSQLe.html
> If you look under the "Gists for Patch" it contains exactly the same
> tasks that CONNX Solutions Inc. had to accomplish in every case.

These packages are based upon cygwin. Problems with cygwin:

(1) GNU license issues.
(2) Does not work well with anti-virus software
(3) Since OS level copy-on-write is negated, process creation is much slower.
(4) Since OS level copy on write is negated, memory that otherwise would not be
allocated to the process is forced to ba allocated when the parent process data
is copied.

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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M22679@postgresql.org Thu May  9 17:53:53 2002
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Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Issues tangential to win32 support
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From: "Dann Corbit" <DCorbit@connx.com>
To: "mlw" <markw@mohawksoft.com>
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: mlw [mailto:markw@mohawksoft.com]
> Sent: Thursday, May 09, 2002 2:41 PM
> To: Dann Corbit
> Cc: PostgreSQL-development
> Subject: Re: Issues tangential to win32 support
> 
> 
> Dann Corbit wrote:
> > It took a few hundred man hours to do it.  I see the whole 
> Win32 port as
> > a non issue.  Several parties have already completed it 
> (including the
> > place where I work -- CONNX Solutions Inc.).  If we did not 
> do it or all
> > parties who already did it were hit by a comet or something, someone
> > else would accomplish it.  It isn't trivial but it isn't impossible
> > either.  If a need is large enough, someone will manage it. 
>  The need is
> > large enough.  Ergo...
> > 
> > Here are some other things related:
> > 
> > A ready to go Win32 PosgreSQL package:
> > http://www.dbexperts.net/postgresql
> > 
> > An open source project to productize PostgreSQL for Windows 
> (has gone
> > nowhere so far):
> > http://gborg.postgresql.org/project/winpackage/projdisplay.php
> > 
> > A native Win32 port accomplished by a Japanese Group:
> > http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA023283/PostgreSQLe.html
> > If you look under the "Gists for Patch" it contains exactly the same
> > tasks that CONNX Solutions Inc. had to accomplish in every case.
> 
> These packages are based upon cygwin. Problems with cygwin:
> 
> (1) GNU license issues.
> (2) Does not work well with anti-virus software
> (3) Since OS level copy-on-write is negated, process creation 
> is much slower.
> (4) Since OS level copy on write is negated, memory that 
> otherwise would not be
> allocated to the process is forced to ba allocated when the 
> parent process data
> is copied.

Our package avoids Cygwin altogether.  We wrote our own POSIX layer from
scratch, and we junked fork() for CreateProcess() {and inserted copious:
#ifdef ICKY_WIN32_KLUDGE
/* our code goes here */
#else
/* Standard UNIX code goes here */
#endif

It's complete, and it performs like the burning blue blazes.  We have
run the full PostgreSQL test suite to completion with success.  However,
before we release any SQL tool, we have our own test suite with tens of
thousands of tests to perform.  Hence, we won't have a release until
June at the earliest.

I think the Japanese one also does not use Cygwin (but I have not tried
installing it yet).

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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M22681@postgresql.org Thu May  9 18:02:06 2002
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Date: Thu, 09 May 2002 17:56:01 -0400
From: mlw <markw@mohawksoft.com>
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Dann Corbit wrote:
> Our package avoids Cygwin altogether.  We wrote our own POSIX layer from
> scratch, and we junked fork() for CreateProcess() {and inserted copious:
> #ifdef ICKY_WIN32_KLUDGE
> /* our code goes here */
> #else
> /* Standard UNIX code goes here */
> #endif

OK, what sorts of things did you do in your ICKY_WIN32_KLUDGE? Were they ever
migrated back into the main tree? Did you simulate fork() or a stand-alone?

I know Windows very well, but I have thus far remained ignorant of PostgreSQL
internals.

> 
> It's complete, and it performs like the burning blue blazes.  We have
> run the full PostgreSQL test suite to completion with success.  However,
> before we release any SQL tool, we have our own test suite with tens of
> thousands of tests to perform.  Hence, we won't have a release until
> June at the earliest.
> 
> I think the Japanese one also does not use Cygwin (but I have not tried
> installing it yet).

The japanese site claims cygwin.

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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M22682@postgresql.org Thu May  9 18:17:03 2002
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Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Issues tangential to win32 support
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Thread-Index: AcH3pRcvhdfkS6Z+SXCu6lfzMZH4qAAAK5Cw
From: "Dann Corbit" <DCorbit@connx.com>
To: "mlw" <markw@mohawksoft.com>
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: mlw [mailto:markw@mohawksoft.com]
> Sent: Thursday, May 09, 2002 2:56 PM
> To: Dann Corbit
> Cc: PostgreSQL-development
> Subject: Re: Issues tangential to win32 support
> 
> 
> Dann Corbit wrote:
> > Our package avoids Cygwin altogether.  We wrote our own 
> POSIX layer from
> > scratch, and we junked fork() for CreateProcess() {and 
> inserted copious:
> > #ifdef ICKY_WIN32_KLUDGE
> > /* our code goes here */
> > #else
> > /* Standard UNIX code goes here */
> > #endif
> 
> OK, what sorts of things did you do in your 
> ICKY_WIN32_KLUDGE? Were they ever
> migrated back into the main tree? Did you simulate fork() or 
> a stand-alone?

I explained it in another mail.

We had quite a few changes we had to make (several hundred man-hours,
about half of which was the POSIX layer and the precise time routines).

No sense trying to simulate fork() -- it stinks on Win32.  The Cygwin
and PW32 implementations of fork() are dogs.  Smarter folks than us
tried it and failed miserably.  Why reinvent a broken wheel?  We use
create process and our own startup code.  Our version is competitive
with fork() on Linux for spawning tasks and in general the queries run
considerably faster.
 
> I know Windows very well, but I have thus far remained 
> ignorant of PostgreSQL
> internals.

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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M22684@postgresql.org Thu May  9 18:34:44 2002
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Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Issues tangential to win32 support
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From: "Dann Corbit" <DCorbit@connx.com>
To: "mlw" <markw@mohawksoft.com>
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: mlw [mailto:markw@mohawksoft.com]
> Sent: Thursday, May 09, 2002 2:56 PM
> To: Dann Corbit
> Cc: PostgreSQL-development
> Subject: Re: Issues tangential to win32 support
> 
> 
> Dann Corbit wrote:
> > Our package avoids Cygwin altogether.  We wrote our own 
> POSIX layer from
> > scratch, and we junked fork() for CreateProcess() {and 
> inserted copious:
> > #ifdef ICKY_WIN32_KLUDGE
> > /* our code goes here */
> > #else
> > /* Standard UNIX code goes here */
> > #endif
> 
> OK, what sorts of things did you do in your 
> ICKY_WIN32_KLUDGE? Were they ever
> migrated back into the main tree? Did you simulate fork() or 
> a stand-alone?
> 
> I know Windows very well, but I have thus far remained 
> ignorant of PostgreSQL
> internals.
> 
> > 
> > It's complete, and it performs like the burning blue 
> blazes.  We have
> > run the full PostgreSQL test suite to completion with 
> success.  However,
> > before we release any SQL tool, we have our own test suite 
> with tens of
> > thousands of tests to perform.  Hence, we won't have a release until
> > June at the earliest.
> > 
> > I think the Japanese one also does not use Cygwin (but I 
> have not tried
> > installing it yet).
> 
> The japanese site claims cygwin.

This is not correct.  (Fortunately, we have someone here who reads and
writes Japanese).
At any rate, it is a complete, native implementation of PostgreSQL
without any need for Cygwin.
Just to be sure, I did a "depends" on each of the binaries and none of
them use Cywin.

So the Japanese site did exactly the same thing that we did.

Here are bitmaps showing the complete dependency trees of both the
Japanese efforts and ours as well:
Us:
ftp://cap.connx.com/pub/chess-engines/new-approach/connx.bmp

Japanese:
ftp://cap.connx.com/pub/chess-engines/new-approach/japanese.bmp

No Cygwin in sight in either case.


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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M22685@postgresql.org Thu May  9 18:39:40 2002
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Date: Thu, 09 May 2002 18:33:50 -0400
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Dann Corbit wrote:
http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA023283/PostgreSQLe.html

Mentions cygwin, am I misunderstanding?

Does not matter, the issue is that you guys said you did it. OK, have you been
able to bring the changed back into the main source tree? (Are you not trying?)

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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M22686@postgresql.org Thu May  9 18:46:24 2002
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Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Issues tangential to win32 support
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From: "Dann Corbit" <DCorbit@connx.com>
To: "mlw" <markw@mohawksoft.com>
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: mlw [mailto:markw@mohawksoft.com]
> Sent: Thursday, May 09, 2002 3:34 PM
> To: Dann Corbit
> Cc: PostgreSQL-development
> Subject: Re: Issues tangential to win32 support
> 
> 
> Dann Corbit wrote:
> http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA023283/PostgreSQLe.html
> 
> Mentions cygwin, am I misunderstanding?
> 
> Does not matter, the issue is that you guys said you did it. 
> OK, have you been
> able to bring the changed back into the main source tree? 
> (Are you not trying?)

I am not enrolled in the CVS project, and don't even know how to use it.
We use "Visual Source Safe" here -- really an icky tool but at least
everyone here knows it.

There is some debate here as to whether to keep the changes private or
to turn them back to the project.  Not sure how it will turn out.

I am not sure that the project would want them anyway, since the
represent some pretty major surgery and impact the readability of the
code in a quite adverse way.

At any rate, the Japanese version appears to be released.  In fact, I
have downloaded the whole project and gave it a spin.  It is actually
very nice.  If you just need to use something for right now, why not go
with that version?

In any case, there is simply no way possible that anything will ever
escape from here before June at the absolute earliest (full regression
test is company policy).

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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M22687@postgresql.org Thu May  9 18:57:40 2002
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Date: Thu, 09 May 2002 18:51:32 -0400
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Dann Corbit wrote:
> I am not enrolled in the CVS project, and don't even know how to use it.
> We use "Visual Source Safe" here -- really an icky tool but at least
> everyone here knows it.

Source Safe? Yikes. I haven't used that in a long time.

> 
> There is some debate here as to whether to keep the changes private or
> to turn them back to the project.  Not sure how it will turn out.
> 
> I am not sure that the project would want them anyway, since the
> represent some pretty major surgery and impact the readability of the
> code in a quite adverse way.

I hear you on that. I have tons of code that has #ifdef GCC and #ifdef WIN32 in
lots of places. 

Obviously you wrap what you can in macros and/or functions, but you can't do
that 100% the time. Some people REALLY hate #ifdef/#endif and view them as a
bad coding practice. Others, like myself, view them as a proper usage of the
language constructs and judicious use of them actually help the developer
understand the code better.

> 
> At any rate, the Japanese version appears to be released.  In fact, I
> have downloaded the whole project and gave it a spin.  It is actually
> very nice.  If you just need to use something for right now, why not go
> with that version?

I have no desire for a Windows version for myself, but I see the need for it.

> 
> In any case, there is simply no way possible that anything will ever
> escape from here before June at the absolute earliest (full regression
> test is company policy).

ok

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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M22697@postgresql.org Thu May  9 21:51:20 2002
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Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Issues tangential to win32 support
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> Dann Corbit wrote:
> http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA023283/PostgreSQLe.html
> 
> Mentions cygwin, am I misunderstanding?

Are you talking about following in the page?

----------------------------------------------------------------
* Notice: Based upon the GNU-cygwin, there is a version that works
similar to the Unix-compatible operability. Tanida-san Web site is
supporting this environment in Japanese.
----------------------------------------------------------------

It cleary refers to another work.
--
Tatsuo Ishii

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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M22721@postgresql.org Fri May 10 10:04:20 2002
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Subject: [HACKERS] FW: Cygwin PostgreSQL Information and Suggestions
Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 14:55:53 +0100
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From: "Dave Page" <dpage@vale-housing.co.uk>
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Some comments from Jason Tishler the Cygwin-PostgreSQL maintainer...

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jason Tishler [mailto:jason@tishler.net] 
> Sent: 10 May 2002 15:00
> To: Dave Page
> Cc: pgsql-cygwin@postgresql.org
> Subject: Cygwin PostgreSQL Information and Suggestions
> 
> 
> Dave,
> 
> Would you forward this to pgsql-hackers since I'm not subscribed?
> 
> On Thu, May 09, 2002 at 10:45:42PM +0100, Dave Page wrote:
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Jason Tishler [mailto:jason@tishler.net]
> > > Sent: 09 May 2002 21:52
> > > To: Dave Page
> > > 
> > > On Thu, May 09, 2002 at 07:51:33PM +0100, Dave Page wrote:
> > > > BTW Are you aware there is currently a rather busy thread
> > > > about native Windows/Beos ports on -hackers...
> > > 
> > > No, I'm not subscribed, but I just read all that I could find
> > > in the archives.
> > > [snip]
> > > 
> > > > ...which is currently drifting towards a cutdown Cygwin version?
> > > 
> > > Maybe I'll be out of (another) job soon? :,)
> > 
> > [snip]
> > 
> > Personnally, I think (from a 'good for PostgreSQL' rather 
> than 'good 
> > for Cygwin' perspective) that the way forward is a Cygwin 
> based system 
> > but using a tailored downloader/installer that installs the system 
> > 'like a Windows app' (and quickly & easily etc.) rather than the 
> > current way which is Windows 'being' *nix. I think that's very 
> > offputting for many potential users (as others have said on the 
> > -hackers thread).
> 
> I agree with the above, but more can be done with Cygwin and 
> its setup.exe that can give a fair amount of bang for the 
> buck for some good short time gains too.  I will give some 
> details below.
> 
> I also wanted to dispel some misinformation (IMO) that I 
> perceived from the above mentioned posts and/or elaborate on 
> some of the items:
> 
> 1. Cygwin's setup.exe supports categories and dependencies.  
> Hence, there is no reason to install all Cygwin packages in 
> order to ensure properly PostgreSQL operation.  Someone just 
> has to determine what is the minimal set of packages 
> necessary for PostgreSQL and I will update the setup.hint 
> accordingly.  The current setup.hint is as follows:
> 
>     sdesc: "PostgreSQL Data Base Management System"
>     category: Database
>     requires: ash cygwin readline zlib libreadline5
> 
> Sorry, but since I install all Cygwin packages plus about 30 
> additional ones I haven't desire to determine what are the 
> minimal requirements.
> 
> 2. Cygwin's setup.exe is customizable.  There is a tool 
> called "upset" that generates the setup.ini file that drives 
> setup.exe.  PostgreSQL could offer a customized setup.  For 
> example, this is what the XEmacs folks are doing.
> 
> 3. Cygwin's setup.exe can run package specific postinstall 
> scripts during the installation.  Hence, someone could 
> automate the steps enumerated (e.g., postmaster NT service 
> installation, initdb, etc.) in my README:
> 
 
http://www.tishler.net/jason/software/postgresql/postgresql-7.2.1.README

to ease the installation burden.

4. Cygwin PostgreSQL is perceived to have poor performance.  I have
never done any benchmarks regarding this issue, but apparently Terry
Carlin (from the defunct Great Bridge) did:

    http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-cygwin/2001-08/msg00029.php

Specifically, he indicates the following:

    BTW, Up through 40 users, PostgreSQL under CYGWIN using the TPC-C
    benchmark performed very much the same as Linux PostgreSQL on the
    exact hardware.

5. Cygwin PostgreSQL is perceived to have poor reliability.
Unfortunately, I have not been able to gather data to concur or refute
this perception due a sudden job "change" last summer. :,)  However,
there are reports such as the following on the pgsql-cygwin list:

    http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-cygwin/2002-04/msg00021.php

IMO, the biggest reliability issue with Cygwin PostgreSQL is it's
dependency on cygipc.  There is some very recent work to create a Cygwin
daemon to support features such as System V IPC.  So soon the cygipc
dependency and its "problems" will be going way.

Those interested in a "Windows" PostgreSQL should possibly consider
contributing in this area or other "hard edges" (due to Windows-isms)
that would improve the reliability of Cygwin PostgreSQL.  BTW, I have
found the Cygwin core developers very responsive to PostgreSQL problems
because it drives the Cygwin DLL harder than most other applications.

6. Satisfying the Cygwin license for binary distribution is very simple.
Just include the source for the Cygwin DLL and all executables that are
linked with it in your distribution package.  It is really that easy.

Jason

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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M22731@postgresql.org Fri May 10 12:36:48 2002
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To: "Dave Page" <dpage@vale-housing.co.uk>
cc: pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org, Jason@tishler.net
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] FW: Cygwin PostgreSQL Information and Suggestions 
In-Reply-To: <214E9C0A75426D47A876A2FD8A07426E66B4@salem.vale-housing.co.uk> 
References: <214E9C0A75426D47A876A2FD8A07426E66B4@salem.vale-housing.co.uk>
Comments: In-reply-to "Dave Page" <dpage@vale-housing.co.uk>
	message dated "Fri, 10 May 2002 14:55:53 +0100"
Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 12:31:06 -0400
Message-ID: <28995.1021048266@sss.pgh.pa.us>
From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
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"Dave Page" <dpage@vale-housing.co.uk> forwards:
> 4. Cygwin PostgreSQL is perceived to have poor performance.  I have
> never done any benchmarks regarding this issue, but apparently Terry
> Carlin (from the defunct Great Bridge) did:

>     http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-cygwin/2001-08/msg00029.php

> Specifically, he indicates the following:

>     BTW, Up through 40 users, PostgreSQL under CYGWIN using the TPC-C
>     benchmark performed very much the same as Linux PostgreSQL on the
>     exact hardware.

It should be noted that the benchmark Terry is describing fires up
N concurrent backends and then measures the runtime for a specific query
workload.  So it's not measuring connection startup time, which is
alleged by some to be Cygwin's weak spot.  Nonetheless, I invite the
Postgres-on-Cygwin-isn't-worth-our-time camp to produce some benchmarks
supporting their position.  I'm getting tired of reading unsubstantiated
assertions.

			regards, tom lane

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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M22748@postgresql.org Fri May 10 17:51:28 2002
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Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Native Win32, How about this?
From: Hannu Krosing <hannu@tm.ee>
To: mlw <markw@mohawksoft.com>
cc: Jan Wieck <janwieck@yahoo.com>, Jean-Michel POURE <jm.poure@freesurf.fr>,
   Justin Clift <justin@postgresql.org>, "Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy@hub.org>,
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   PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
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On Sat, 2002-05-11 at 02:25, mlw wrote:
> A binary version of PostgreSQL for Windows should not use the cygwin dll. I
> know and understand there is some disagreement with this position, but in this
> I'm sure about this.
 
...

> I believe we can use the cygwin development environment, and direct gcc not to
> link with the cygwin dll. Last time I looked it was a command line option. This
> will produce a native windows application. No emulation, just a standard C
> runtime.

It seems that mingw (http://www.mingw.org/) does exactly this and
provides needed headers/libs. And they have also non-cycwin minimal
build environment (MSYS) that supplies make,sh and other stuff we might
use for running initdb and other shell scripts.

> Some of the hits will be file path manipulation, '/' vs '\', the notion of
> drive letters, and case insensitivity in file names. 
> 
> Unicode may be an issue, I haven't looked at that yet. Is that a must for the
> initial release?

Probably not.

>> 
> A couple simple programs can be written using msvc to monitor, start and stop
> PostgreSQL. The programs will be simple using the application wizard, just make
> a small dialog box application.

dev-c++ has also wizards for easy making of trivial user interfaces

http://sourceforge.net/projects/dev-cpp/

--------------
Hannu



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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M22745@postgresql.org Fri May 10 17:31:05 2002
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Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 17:25:02 -0400
From: mlw <markw@mohawksoft.com>
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Subject: [HACKERS] Native Win32, How about this?
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A binary version of PostgreSQL for Windows should not use the cygwin dll. I
know and understand there is some disagreement with this position, but in this
I'm sure about this.

The tools used to create the binary need not be Microsoft, many venders have
used Borland or Watcom, the run of the mill user/developer does not care. The
developers who do care won't mind the cygwin development environment as long as
it produces a native Windows binary that does not play tricks such as fork().

Windows developers don't care too much about source code. The build environment
will not be a problem.

The issue is that the system must perform well and must be stable. I do not
believe that cygwin can meet this requirement. Having done some research for
these discussions, I think we know it has startup performance issues and
unknown operational issues.

FYI: My PHP project msession, can produce both a Windows version and a Cygwin
version. It is threaded C++, but I have measured a performance improvements
using the native Windows version over the cygwin version. I have since
abandoned the cygwin version.

I believe we can use the cygwin development environment, and direct gcc not to
link with the cygwin dll. Last time I looked it was a command line option. This
will produce a native windows application. No emulation, just a standard C
runtime.

Some of the hits will be file path manipulation, '/' vs '\', the notion of
drive letters, and case insensitivity in file names. 

Unicode may be an issue, I haven't looked at that yet. Is that a must for the
initial release?

There will be a need for some emulation/api specification of things like
semaphores, shared memory, file API (I would like to use Windows native
CreateFile routines, as these should be pretty fast.), and so on.

We will also have to breakup postgres and postmaster, and for the Windows
version use CreateProcess. There are a number of ways to attack this, globals
in a structure based in shared memory, globals in a .DLL exported to processes
and shared, and so on.

I think a huge time savings can be had by avoiding rewriting everything for the
Microsoft build environment. As far as I know, and please correct me if I'm
wrong, code produced by the cygwin gcc is freely distributable and need not be
GPL.

Once we have it working without fork() using the cygwin build environment, we
will have a native Windows application, we can then further evaluate whether or
not we want to expend the work to make a MSC version. 

Once the backend and most of the tools are built without requiring the
cygwin.dll, installation is a breeze. Just dump it somewhere and run it.

A couple simple programs can be written using msvc to monitor, start and stop
PostgreSQL. The programs will be simple using the application wizard, just make
a small dialog box application.

Pgaccess will provide all the GUI stuff, and we may even be able to wrap the
monitor code into pgaccess.

The server install can be done with install shield.

There is code that will run any program as an NT service. We can use that for
server installations. We can use the MSVC wizard application to pop-up in the
tool bar.

Have I missed anything?
Is this a realistic and attainable plan?

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TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster

From pgsql-hackers-owner+M22762@postgresql.org Sat May 11 11:30:25 2002
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Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Native Win32, How about this? 
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> A binary version of PostgreSQL for Windows should not use the cygwin
> dll. I know and understand there is some disagreement with this
> position, but in this I'm sure about this.

That may ultimately be desirable.

In the short term, it is likely preferable to use cygwin.

It is only necessary to point at MySQL for an example.  Cygwin is used there.
<http://www.mysql.com/downloads/mysql-3.23.html>  It is being used widely, 
"crap" or not.

Cygwin may not ultimately be the ideal thing to use; we don't yet live in 
Pangloss' "Best of All Possible Worlds," and thus have to live with some 
things not being ideal.

If having the installer install Cygwin as well as the DBMS makes it easy to 
have something usable soon, and this allows 100,000 WinFolk to try out 
PostgreSQL, then that's a Big Win.  Out of 100K users, surely two or three may 
be attracted into working on a more Panglossian solution.

It may be fair to say that none of those 100K folk would be using PostgreSQL 
to support HA applications involving hundreds of GB of data.  That's _fine_.

If there are new 100K folk using PostgreSQL/cygwin, _some_ of them will 
outgrow its capabilities, and come looking for improvements.

And as they're Windows users, accustomed to having to pay hefty amounts to 
Microsoft to get support no better than that provided by the Psychic Friends 
Network (see <http://www.bmug.org/news/articles/MSvsPF.html>), they'll 
doubtless be prepared to have to pay _something_ in order for 
"PostgreSQL/Win3K-Enterprise Edition" to become available.

That seems a not too unreasonable path towards the "Best of All Possible 
Worlds."  There may be a bit of hyperbole in the above, but any time Voltaire 
gets quoted, that's likely to happen :-).
--
(reverse (concatenate 'string "gro.gultn@" "enworbbc"))
http://www.cbbrowne.com/info/wp.html
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

-- 
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It's a  little known fact  that the Dark  Ages were caused by  the Y1K
problem.



--==_Exmh_-82808586P
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> A binary version of PostgreSQL for Windows should not use the cygwin
> dll. I know and understand there is some disagreement with this
> position, but in this I'm sure about this.

That may ultimately be desirable.

In the short term, it is likely preferable to use cygwin.

It is only necessary to point at MySQL for an example.  Cygwin is used there.
<http://www.mysql.com/downloads/mysql-3.23.html>  It is being used widely, 
"crap" or not.

Cygwin may not ultimately be the ideal thing to use; we don't yet live in 
Pangloss' "Best of All Possible Worlds," and thus have to live with some 
things not being ideal.

If having the installer install Cygwin as well as the DBMS makes it easy to 
have something usable soon, and this allows 100,000 WinFolk to try out 
PostgreSQL, then that's a Big Win.  Out of 100K users, surely two or three may 
be attracted into working on a more Panglossian solution.

It may be fair to say that none of those 100K folk would be using PostgreSQL 
to support HA applications involving hundreds of GB of data.  That's _fine_.

If there are new 100K folk using PostgreSQL/cygwin, _some_ of them will 
outgrow its capabilities, and come looking for improvements.

And as they're Windows users, accustomed to having to pay hefty amounts to 
Microsoft to get support no better than that provided by the Psychic Friends 
Network (see <http://www.bmug.org/news/articles/MSvsPF.html>), they'll 
doubtless be prepared to have to pay _something_ in order for 
"PostgreSQL/Win3K-Enterprise Edition" to become available.

That seems a not too unreasonable path towards the "Best of All Possible 
Worlds."  There may be a bit of hyperbole in the above, but any time Voltaire 
gets quoted, that's likely to happen :-).
- --
(reverse (concatenate 'string "gro.gultn@" "enworbbc"))
http://www.cbbrowne.com/info/wp.html
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

- -- 
(concatenate 'string "cbbrowne" "@ntlug.org")
http://www.cbbrowne.com/info/multiplexor.html
It's a  little known fact  that the Dark  Ages were caused by  the Y1K
problem.


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Comment: Exmh version 2.3.1 01/18/2001 (debian 2.3.1-1)

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--==_Exmh_-82808586P--

From pgsql-hackers-owner+M22812@postgresql.org Mon May 13 11:30:34 2002
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Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 09:59:04 -0400
From: Jason Tishler <jason@tishler.net>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Native Win32, How about this?
In-Reply-To: <3CDC3AAE.E39FF877@mohawksoft.com>
To: mlw <markw@mohawksoft.com>
cc: Jan Wieck <janwieck@yahoo.com>, Jean-Michel POURE <jm.poure@freesurf.fr>,
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mlw,

On Fri, May 10, 2002 at 05:25:02PM -0400, mlw wrote:
> A binary version of PostgreSQL for Windows should not use the cygwin
> dll. I know and understand there is some disagreement with this position,
> but in this I'm sure about this.

Sorry, but I'm not going to touch the above -- even with a ten foot pole.
Or, at least try not to... :,)

> I believe we can use the cygwin development environment, and direct gcc
> not to link with the cygwin dll. Last time I looked it was a command line
> option. This will produce a native windows application. No emulation,
> just a standard C runtime.

Yes, the above mentioned option is "-mno-cygwin".

> Some of the hits will be file path manipulation, '/' vs '\', the notion of
> drive letters, and case insensitivity in file names. 

Case insensitivity is typically "enabled" regardless.  Unless you are
referring to CYGWIN=check_case:strict, but almost no one uses this setting.

Just to be explicit, another hit will be the loss of Posix.

> [snip]
> 
> I think a huge time savings can be had by avoiding rewriting everything
> for the Microsoft build environment.

Yes, you should use Cygwin and gcc -mno-cygwin or MSYS and Mingw.

> As far as I know, and please correct me if I'm wrong, code produced by
> the cygwin gcc is freely distributable and need not be GPL.

The above is true only with gcc -mno-cygwin or Mingw code.  Any code
produced by the normal Cygwin gcc (and hence, linked against cygwin1.dll)
is effectively GPL'd or at least required to be open source.

> [snip]

Jason

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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M22887@postgresql.org Thu May 16 07:48:56 2002
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From: Joerg Hessdoerfer <Joerg.Hessdoerfer@sea-gmbh.com>
Organization: S.E.A Datentechnik GmbH
To: pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Subject: [HACKERS] WIN32 native ... lets start?!?
Date: Thu, 16 May 2002 13:47:45 +0200
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Hi all,

I followed the various threads regarding this for some time now. My current 
situation is:

I'm working at a company which does industrial automation, and does it's own 
custom products. We try to be cross-platform, but it's a windoze world, as 
far as most measurement devices or PLCs are concerned. We also employ 
databases for various tasks (including simple ones as holding configuration 
data, but also hammering production data into it at a rate of several hundred 
records/sec.)
Well, we would *love* to use PostgreSQL in most our projects and products, 
(and we do already use it in some), because it has proven to be very reliable 
and quite fast.

So, I'm faced with using PostgreSQL on windows also (you can't always put a 
Linux box besides). We do this using cygwin, but it's a bit painful ;-) 
(although it works!).

Thinking about the hreads I read, it seems there are 2 obstacles to native PG 
on W:

1.) no fork,
2.) no SYSV IPC

Ok, 1.) is an issue, but there's a fork() in MinGW, so it's 'just' going to 
be a bit slow on new connections to the DB, right?? But this could be sorted 
out once we *have* a native WIN32 build.

The second one's a bit harder, but... I'm currently trying to find time to do 
a minimal implementation of SYSV IPC on WIN32 calls, just enough to get PG up 
(doesn't need msg*() for example, right?). 
As far as I understand it, we would not need to have IPC items around *after* 
all backends and postmaster have gone away, or? Then there's no need for a 
'daemon' process like in cygwin.

So, my route would be to get it to run *somehow* without paying attention to 
speed and not to change much of the existing code, THEN see how we could get 
rid of fork() on windows.

What do you guys think? Anyone up to join efforts? (I'll start the IPC thingy 
anyway, as an exercise, and see where I'll end).

Greetings,
        Joerg

P.s.: thanks for a great database system!!
-- 
Leading SW developer  - S.E.A GmbH
Mail: joerg.hessdoerfer@sea-gmbh.com
WWW:  http://www.sea-gmbh.com

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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M22888@postgresql.org Thu May 16 09:39:14 2002
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Date: Thu, 16 May 2002 10:38:25 -0300 (ADT)
From: "Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy@hub.org>
To: Joerg Hessdoerfer <Joerg.Hessdoerfer@sea-gmbh.com>
cc: pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] WIN32 native ... lets start?!?
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Actually, take a look at the thread starting at:

	http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2002-05/msg00665.php

Right now, IMHO, the big show stopper is passing global variables to the
child processes in Windows ... the above thread talks about a method of
pulling together the global variables *cleanly* that Tom seems to feel
wouldn't add much in the way of long term maintenance headaches ... *and*,
as I understand it, would provide us with a means to use threading in
future developments if deemed appropriate ...

>From what I read by those 'in the know' about Windows programming, if we
could centralize the global variables somewhat, using CreateProcess in
Windows shouldn't be a big deal, eliminiating the whole fork() headache
...

On Thu, 16 May 2002, Joerg Hessdoerfer wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I followed the various threads regarding this for some time now. My current
> situation is:
>
> I'm working at a company which does industrial automation, and does it's own
> custom products. We try to be cross-platform, but it's a windoze world, as
> far as most measurement devices or PLCs are concerned. We also employ
> databases for various tasks (including simple ones as holding configuration
> data, but also hammering production data into it at a rate of several hundred
> records/sec.)
> Well, we would *love* to use PostgreSQL in most our projects and products,
> (and we do already use it in some), because it has proven to be very reliable
> and quite fast.
>
> So, I'm faced with using PostgreSQL on windows also (you can't always put a
> Linux box besides). We do this using cygwin, but it's a bit painful ;-)
> (although it works!).
>
> Thinking about the hreads I read, it seems there are 2 obstacles to native PG
> on W:
>
> 1.) no fork,
> 2.) no SYSV IPC
>
> Ok, 1.) is an issue, but there's a fork() in MinGW, so it's 'just' going to
> be a bit slow on new connections to the DB, right?? But this could be sorted
> out once we *have* a native WIN32 build.
>
> The second one's a bit harder, but... I'm currently trying to find time to do
> a minimal implementation of SYSV IPC on WIN32 calls, just enough to get PG up
> (doesn't need msg*() for example, right?).
> As far as I understand it, we would not need to have IPC items around *after*
> all backends and postmaster have gone away, or? Then there's no need for a
> 'daemon' process like in cygwin.
>
> So, my route would be to get it to run *somehow* without paying attention to
> speed and not to change much of the existing code, THEN see how we could get
> rid of fork() on windows.
>
> What do you guys think? Anyone up to join efforts? (I'll start the IPC thingy
> anyway, as an exercise, and see where I'll end).
>
> Greetings,
>         Joerg
>
> P.s.: thanks for a great database system!!
> --
> Leading SW developer  - S.E.A GmbH
> Mail: joerg.hessdoerfer@sea-gmbh.com
> WWW:  http://www.sea-gmbh.com
>
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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M23371@postgresql.org Mon Jun  3 07:19:20 2002
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Reply-To: "coventry" <coventry@one.net>
From: "coventry" <coventry@one.net>
To: "pg hackers" <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] HEADS UP: Win32/OS2/BeOS native ports
Date: Sun, 2 Jun 2002 21:11:02 -0400
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I think its already been determined that the cygwin option is too low
performing.

However, the apache stuff could be quite useful - but if that effort
were to be undertaken, it would make more sense to move all versions of the
code the
the apache runtime, for all platforms.  Are there any other runtime
libraries out there
that are cross platform, open/free and high performance?  I know the mozilla
XPCOM
libraries work quite nicely, but are geared more towards multithreaded
apps - and the
COM-alike infrastructure is something we wouldn't need.

~Jon

----- Original Message -----
From: Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
To: mlw <markw@mohawksoft.com>
Cc: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>; Marc G. Fournier <scrappy@hub.org>;
<pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Sent: Sunday, June 02, 2002 8:49 PM
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] HEADS UP: Win32/OS2/BeOS native ports


> mlw wrote:
> > Like I told Marc, I don't care. You spec out what you want and I'll
write it
> > for Windows.
> >
> > That being said, a SysV IPC interface for native Windows would be kind
of cool
> > to have.
>
> I am wondering why we don't just use the Cygwin shm/sem code in our
> project, or maybe the Apache stuff; why bother reinventing the wheel.
>
> --
>   Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
>   pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
>   +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
>   +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026
>
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From jason@tishler.net Mon Jun  3 09:19:17 2002
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From: Jason Tishler <jason@tishler.net>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] HEADS UP: Win32/OS2/BeOS native ports
In-Reply-To: <200206030049.g530nL822000@candle.pha.pa.us>
To: Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
cc: mlw <markw@mohawksoft.com>, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>,
   "Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy@hub.org>, pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
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Bruce,

On Sun, Jun 02, 2002 at 08:49:21PM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> mlw wrote:
> > Like I told Marc, I don't care. You spec out what you want and I'll write it
> > for Windows. 
> > 
> > That being said, a SysV IPC interface for native Windows would be kind of
> > cool to have.
> 
> I am wondering why we don't just use the Cygwin shm/sem code in our
> project, or maybe the Apache stuff; why bother reinventing the wheel.

Are you referring to cygipc above?  If so, they even one of the original
cygipc authors would discourage this:

    http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin-apps/2001-09/msg00017.html

Specifically, Ludovic Lange states the following:

    > I really think the solution would be to start again from scratch
    > another implementation, as was suggested. The way we did it was
    > quick and dirty, the goals weren't to have production systems
    > running on it but only to run prototypes. So the internal design
    > (if there is any) may not be adequate for the cygwin project.

However, Rob Collins has contributed a MinGW daemon to Cygwin to support
switching users, System V IPC, etc.  So, this code base may be a more
suitable starting point to satisfy PostgreSQL's native Win32 System V
IPC needs.

Jason

From pgsql-hackers-owner+M23378@postgresql.org Mon Jun  3 09:29:13 2002
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Date: Mon, 03 Jun 2002 09:28:48 -0400
From: Jason Tishler <jason@tishler.net>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] HEADS UP: Win32/OS2/BeOS native ports
In-Reply-To: <3CFAC785.4AAF9F79@mohawksoft.com>
To: mlw <markw@mohawksoft.com>
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   "Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy@hub.org>, pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
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On Sun, Jun 02, 2002 at 09:33:57PM -0400, mlw wrote:
> Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > mlw wrote:
> > > Like I told Marc, I don't care. You spec out what you want and I'll write
> > > it for Windows.
> > >
> > > That being said, a SysV IPC interface for native Windows would be kind of
> > > cool to have.
> > 
> > I am wondering why we don't just use the Cygwin shm/sem code in our
> > project, or maybe the Apache stuff; why bother reinventing the wheel.
> 
> but! in the course of testing some code, I managed to gain some experience
> with cygwin. I have seen fork() problems with a large number of processes. 

Since Cygwin's fork() is implemented with WaitForMultipleObjects(),
it has a limitation of only 63 children per parent.  Also, there can
be DLL base address conflicts (causing Cygwin fork() to fail) that are
avoidable by rebasing the appropriate DLLs.  AFAICT, Cygwin PostgreSQL is
currently *not* affected by this issue where as other Cygwin applications
such as Python and Apache are.

Jason

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Subject: Re: [HACKERS] HEADS UP: Win32/OS2/BeOS native ports
In-Reply-To: <20020603132848.GB1020@tishler.net> from Jason Tishler at "Jun 3,
	2002 09:28:48 am"
To: Jason Tishler <jason@tishler.net>
Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2002 09:44:38 -0400 (EDT)
cc: mlw <markw@mohawksoft.com>, Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>,
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Jason Tishler wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 02, 2002 at 09:33:57PM -0400, mlw wrote:
> > Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > > mlw wrote:
> > > > Like I told Marc, I don't care. You spec out what you want and I'll write
> > > > it for Windows.
> > > >
> > > > That being said, a SysV IPC interface for native Windows would be kind of
> > > > cool to have.
> > >
> > > I am wondering why we don't just use the Cygwin shm/sem code in our
> > > project, or maybe the Apache stuff; why bother reinventing the wheel.
> >
> > but! in the course of testing some code, I managed to gain some experience
> > with cygwin. I have seen fork() problems with a large number of processes.
>
> Since Cygwin's fork() is implemented with WaitForMultipleObjects(),
> it has a limitation of only 63 children per parent.  Also, there can
> be DLL base address conflicts (causing Cygwin fork() to fail) that are
> avoidable by rebasing the appropriate DLLs.  AFAICT, Cygwin PostgreSQL is
> currently *not* affected by this issue where as other Cygwin applications
> such as Python and Apache are.

    Whatever  technical  problems there are, we can debate on and
    on if it's worth working around them in PostgreSQL or  fixing
    them in CygWIN or whatever.

    The  main  problem  will  remain. That using PostgreSQL under
    CygWIN requires  some  UNIX  know  how.  So  a  pure  Windows
    user/shop  needs  UNIX knowledge to run our "Windows port" of
    PostgreSQL? Interesting definition of "port".


Jan

--

#======================================================================#
# It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than for being right. #
# Let's break this rule - forgive me.                                  #
#================================================== JanWieck@Yahoo.com #



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From markw@mohawksoft.com Mon Jun  3 17:40:50 2002
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   "Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy@hub.org>, pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] HEADS UP: Win32/OS2/BeOS native ports
References: <200206030049.g530nL822000@candle.pha.pa.us>
  <3CFAC785.4AAF9F79@mohawksoft.com> <20020603132848.GB1020@tishler.net>
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Jason Tishler wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Jun 03, 2002 at 09:36:51AM -0400, mlw wrote:
> > Jason Tishler wrote:
> > >
> > > On Sun, Jun 02, 2002 at 09:33:57PM -0400, mlw wrote:
> > > > Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > > > > mlw wrote:
> > > > > > Like I told Marc, I don't care. You spec out what you want and I'll
> > > > > > write it for Windows.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > That being said, a SysV IPC interface for native Windows would be
> > > > > > kind of cool to have.
> > > > >
> > > > > I am wondering why we don't just use the Cygwin shm/sem code in our
> > > > > project, or maybe the Apache stuff; why bother reinventing the wheel.
> > > >
> > > > but! in the course of testing some code, I managed to gain some experience
> > > > with cygwin. I have seen fork() problems with a large number of processes.
> > >
> > > Since Cygwin's fork() is implemented with WaitForMultipleObjects(),
> > > it has a limitation of only 63 children per parent.  Also, there can
> > > be DLL base address conflicts (causing Cygwin fork() to fail) that are
> > > avoidable by rebasing the appropriate DLLs.  AFAICT, Cygwin PostgreSQL is
> > > currently *not* affected by this issue where as other Cygwin applications
> > > such as Python and Apache are.
> >
> > Why would not PostgreSQL be affected by this?
> 
> Sorry, if I was unclear -- I should have used two paragraphs above and
> maybe a few more words... :,)
> 
> Cygwin PostgreSQL *is* affected by the Cygwin 63 children per parent
> fork limitation.
> 
> PostgreSQL *can* be affected by the Cygwin DLL base address conflict
> fork issue, but in my experience (both personal and by monitoring the
> Cygwin and pgsql-cygwin lists), no one has been affected yet.  The DLL
> base address conflict is a "probability" thing.  The more DLLs loaded
> the greater the chance of a conflict (and fork() failing).  Since, Cygwin
> PostgreSQL loads only a few DLLs, this has not become an issue (yet).

I'm not sure the DLL load address is a big issue for PostgreSQL, AFAIK no
option DLLs will be loaded by Postmaster. So, with fork() it will be a simple
process. A PostgreSQL child will die upon completion, and never execute fork().

My concern would be the limit on the number of child processes allowed. 63 is
far below what would be considered a usable number in production, and as long
as that is an issue, I don't think anyone would take PostgreSQL seriously.

A Windows version of PostgreSQL must run within the confines of the Windows OS.
The reason, IMHO, that no one has found any serious bugs in the cygwin version,
is because no one is seriously using it. Anyone who *would* seriously use it,
knows better.

From robert.schrem@WiredMinds.de Mon Jun  3 10:08:28 2002
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To: Jason Tishler <jason@tishler.net>, Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
Subject: Re: HEADS UP: Win32/OS2/BeOS native ports - the 'BEST OPEN SOURCE database backend'
Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2002 16:08:14 +0200
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References: <3CD318C1.FF21DFDB@mohawksoft.com> <200206030049.g530nL822000@candle.pha.pa.us> <20020603131840.GA1020@tishler.net>
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Hi,

You may want to have a look at: http://www.garret.ru/~knizhnik/
You find there code for a 'Fast synchronized access to shared 
memory for Windows and for i86 Unix-es".

kind regards,

Robert

> Bruce,
>
> On Sun, Jun 02, 2002 at 08:49:21PM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > mlw wrote:
> > > Like I told Marc, I don't care. You spec out what you want and I'll
> > > write it for Windows.
> > >
> > > That being said, a SysV IPC interface for native Windows would be kind
> > > of cool to have.
> >
> > I am wondering why we don't just use the Cygwin shm/sem code in our
> > project, or maybe the Apache stuff; why bother reinventing the wheel.
>
> Are you referring to cygipc above?  If so, they even one of the original
> cygipc authors would discourage this:
>
>     http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin-apps/2001-09/msg00017.html
>
> Specifically, Ludovic Lange states the following:
>     > I really think the solution would be to start again from scratch
>     > another implementation, as was suggested. The way we did it was
>     > quick and dirty, the goals weren't to have production systems
>     > running on it but only to run prototypes. So the internal design
>     > (if there is any) may not be adequate for the cygwin project.
>
> However, Rob Collins has contributed a MinGW daemon to Cygwin to support
> switching users, System V IPC, etc.  So, this code base may be a more
> suitable starting point to satisfy PostgreSQL's native Win32 System V
> IPC needs.
>
> Jason
>
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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M23404@postgresql.org Wed Jun  5 00:34:21 2002
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From: Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
Message-ID: <200206050433.g554XiN05245@candle.pha.pa.us>
Subject: [HACKERS] Roadmap for a Win32 port
In-Reply-To: <20020516103501.Q6260-100000@mail1.hub.org>
To: PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2002 00:33:44 -0400 (EDT)
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OK, I think I am now caught up on the Win32/cygwin discussion, and would
like to make some remarks.

First, are we doing enough to support the Win32 platform?  I think the
answer is clearly "no".  There are 3-5 groups/companies working on Win32
ports of PostgreSQL.  We always said there would not be PostgreSQL forks
if we were doing our job to meet user needs.  Well, obviously, a number
of groups see a need for a better Win32 port and we aren't meeting that
need, so they are.  I believe this is one of the few cases where groups
are going out on their own because we are falling behind.

So, there is no question in my mind we need to do more to encourage
Win32 ports.  Now, on to the details.

INSTALLER
---------

We clearly need an installer that is zero-hassle for users.  We need to
decide on a direction for this.

GUI
---

We need a slick GUI.  pgadmin2 seems to be everyone's favorite, with
pgaccess on Win32 also an option.  What else do we need here?

BINARY
------

This is the big daddy.   It is broken down into several sections:

FORK()

How do we handle fork()?  Do we use the cygwin method that copies the
whole data segment, or put the global data in shared memory and copy
that small part manually after we create a new process?

THREADING

Related to fork(), do we implement an optionally threaded postmaster,
which eliminates CreateProcess() entirely?  I don't think we will have
superior performance on Win32 without it.  (This would greatly help
Solaris as well.)

IPC

We can use Cygwin, MinGW, Apache, or our own code for this. Are there
other options?

ENVIRONMENT

Lots of our code requires a unix shell and utilities.  Will we continue
using cygwin for this?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

As a roadmap, it would be good to get consensus on as many of these
items as possible so people can start working in these areas.  We can
keep a web page of decisions we have made to help rally developers to
the project.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M23405@postgresql.org Wed Jun  5 01:02:39 2002
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Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Roadmap for a Win32 port
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From: "Dann Corbit" <DCorbit@connx.com>
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bruce Momjian [mailto:pgman@candle.pha.pa.us]
> Sent: Tuesday, June 04, 2002 9:34 PM
> To: PostgreSQL-development
> Subject: [HACKERS] Roadmap for a Win32 port
> 
> 
> OK, I think I am now caught up on the Win32/cygwin 
> discussion, and would
> like to make some remarks.
> 
> First, are we doing enough to support the Win32 platform?  I think the
> answer is clearly "no".  There are 3-5 groups/companies 
> working on Win32
> ports of PostgreSQL.  We always said there would not be 
> PostgreSQL forks
> if we were doing our job to meet user needs.  Well, 
> obviously, a number
> of groups see a need for a better Win32 port and we aren't 
> meeting that
> need, so they are.  I believe this is one of the few cases 
> where groups
> are going out on their own because we are falling behind.
> 
> So, there is no question in my mind we need to do more to encourage
> Win32 ports.  Now, on to the details.
> 
> INSTALLER
> ---------
> 
> We clearly need an installer that is zero-hassle for users.  
> We need to
> decide on a direction for this.
> 
> GUI
> ---
> 
> We need a slick GUI.  pgadmin2 seems to be everyone's favorite, with
> pgaccess on Win32 also an option.  What else do we need here?

Nothing else.  It is better than any commercial tools in current use.
An excellent piece of work.
 
> BINARY
> ------
> 
> This is the big daddy.   It is broken down into several sections:
> 
> FORK()
> 
> How do we handle fork()?  Do we use the cygwin method that copies the
> whole data segment, or put the global data in shared memory and copy
> that small part manually after we create a new process?

Do not try to do a fork() on Win32.  The one at PW32 is better, but
still awful.  Win32 just does not have fascilities for fork().

If you use Cygwin, it will kill the project for commercial use (at least
for many institutions).  That's fine, but it will become an academic
exercise instead of a viable commercial tool.  If they are comfortable
in that [Cygwin] environment, it makes no sense to use Cygwin instead of
Redhat.  The Redhat version will fork() 100 times faster.  After all, if
they are going to use unix tools in a unix interface with Unix scripts
you might as well use UNIX.  And Cygwin requires a license for
commercial use.
http://cygwin.com/licensing.html
 
> THREADING
> 
> Related to fork(), do we implement an optionally threaded postmaster,
> which eliminates CreateProcess() entirely?  I don't think we will have
> superior performance on Win32 without it.  (This would greatly help
> Solaris as well.)

CreateProcess() works well for Win32.  That is the approach that we used
and also the approach used by the Japanese team.
It is very simple.  Simply do a create process call and then perform the
same operations that were done up to that point.  It isn't difficult.
Threading is another possibility.  I think create process is better,
because you can clone the rights of the one who attaches for the spawned
server (if you want to do that).

> 
> IPC
> 
> We can use Cygwin, MinGW, Apache, or our own code for this. Are there
> other options?

We wrote our own from scratch.  Cygwin will kill it.  If there is a
MinGW version it might be OK, but if MinGW is GPL, that will kill it.
Have a look at ACE:
http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/ACE.html
Their license is on the same level as a BSD license.  Now, they use C++,
but you can always write:
extern "C" {
}
wrappers for stuff and keep PostgreSQL itself in pure, vanilla C.  GCC
does come with a C++ compiler, so it isn't going to cut anyone off.
 
> ENVIRONMENT
> 
> Lots of our code requires a Unix shell and utilities.  Will 
> we continue
> using cygwin for this?

We wrote our own utilities from scratch (e.g. initdb).  The Japanese
group that did the port did the same thing.
 
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> -------------
> 
> As a roadmap, it would be good to get consensus on as many of these
> items as possible so people can start working in these areas.  We can
> keep a web page of decisions we have made to help rally developers to
> the project.

If you want a roadmap, the Japanese group laid it out for you.   They
did the exact same steps as we did.  Now, I don't know if we will be
able to contribute or not (it is very much up in the air).  And we had
to do a lot of hacking of the source, so you might not want it if we
volunteered.

Suggestion:
Ask the Japanese group if they would like to post their changes back or
expose them so that the programming team can get ideas form it.

I actually like what they did better than what we did (A giant DLL and
all the binaries are microscopic -- it was how I suggested to do it here
but it was vetoed).

Anyway, here is a roadmap laid out for you exactly.  Just do what it
says and you will be fine:
http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA023283/PostgreSQLe.html

Look at where it says "Gists for patch" and do that.

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From markir@slingshot.co.nz Wed Jun  5 03:44:54 2002
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Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Roadmap for a Win32 port
From: Mark kirkwood <markir@slingshot.co.nz>
To: Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
cc: PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers@postgreSQL.org>
In-Reply-To: <200206050433.g554XiN05245@candle.pha.pa.us>
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Status: ROr

On Wed, 2002-06-05 at 16:33, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> OK, I think I am now caught up on the Win32/cygwin discussion, and would
> like to make some remarks.
> 
> First, are we doing enough to support the Win32 platform?  I think the
> answer is clearly "no".  There are 3-5 groups/companies working on Win32
> ports of PostgreSQL.  We always said there would not be PostgreSQL forks
> if we were doing our job to meet user needs.  Well, obviously, a number
> of groups see a need for a better Win32 port and we aren't meeting that
> need, so they are.  I believe this is one of the few cases where groups
> are going out on their own because we are falling behind.
> 
> So, there is no question in my mind we need to do more to encourage
> Win32 ports.  Now, on to the details.
> 
> INSTALLER
> ---------
> 
> We clearly need an installer that is zero-hassle for users.  We need to
> decide on a direction for this.
> 
> GUI
> ---
> 
> We need a slick GUI.  pgadmin2 seems to be everyone's favorite, with
> pgaccess on Win32 also an option.  What else do we need here?
> 
> BINARY
> ------
> 
> This is the big daddy.   It is broken down into several sections:
> 
> FORK()
> 
> How do we handle fork()?  Do we use the cygwin method that copies the
> whole data segment, or put the global data in shared memory and copy
> that small part manually after we create a new process?
> 
> THREADING
> 
> Related to fork(), do we implement an optionally threaded postmaster,
> which eliminates CreateProcess() entirely?  I don't think we will have
> superior performance on Win32 without it.  (This would greatly help
> Solaris as well.)
> 
> IPC
> 
> We can use Cygwin, MinGW, Apache, or our own code for this. Are there
> other options?
> 
> ENVIRONMENT
> 
> Lots of our code requires a unix shell and utilities.  Will we continue
> using cygwin for this?
> 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> As a roadmap, it would be good to get consensus on as many of these
> items as possible so people can start working in these areas.  We can
> keep a web page of decisions we have made to help rally developers to
> the project.
> 
> -- 
>   Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
>   pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
>   +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
>   +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026
> 
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> 
Is it worth looking at how the mysql crowd did their win32 port  -
(or is that intrinsically a _bad_thing_ to do..) ?

(I am guessing that is why their sources requires c++ ....)

regards

Mark


From pgsql-hackers-owner+M23408@postgresql.org Wed Jun  5 08:16:29 2002
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Date: Wed, 05 Jun 2002 08:07:06 -0400
From: Jason Tishler <jason@tishler.net>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Roadmap for a Win32 port
	<D90A5A6C612A39408103E6ECDD77B82906F465@voyager.corporate.connx.com>
To: Dann Corbit <DCorbit@connx.com>
cc: Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>,
   PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
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Dan,

The following is to help keep the archives accurate and should not be
construed as an argument against the native Win32 port.

On Tue, Jun 04, 2002 at 10:02:14PM -0700, Dann Corbit wrote:
> And Cygwin requires a license for commercial use.
> http://cygwin.com/licensing.html

The above is not necessarily true:

    Red Hat sells a special Cygwin License for customers who are unable
    to provide their application in open source code form.

Note that the above only comes into play if your application links
with the Cygwin DLL.  This is easily avoidable by using JDBC, ODBC,
Win32 libpq, etc.  Hence, most people will not be required to purchase
this license from Red Hat.

Jason

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From Igor.Kovalenko@motorola.com Wed Jun  5 15:31:26 2002
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Message-ID: <11f301c20cc7$b1f73a70$22c30191@comm.mot.com>
From: "Igor Kovalenko" <Igor.Kovalenko@motorola.com>
To: "Bruce Momjian" <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>,
   "PostgreSQL-development" <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
References: <200206050433.g554XiN05245@candle.pha.pa.us>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Roadmap for a Win32 port
Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2002 14:32:13 -0500
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I might be naive here, but would not proper threading model remove the need
for fork() altogether? On both Unix and Win32? Should not be too hard to
come up with abstraction which encapsulates POSIX, BeOS and Win32 threads...
I am not sure how universal POSIX threads are by now. Any important Unix
platforms which don't support them yet?

This has downside of letting any bug to kill the whole thing. On the bright
side, performance should be better on some platforms (note however, Apache
group still can't come up with implementation of threaded model which would
provide better performance than forked or other models). The need to deal
with possibility of 'alien' postmaster running along with orphaned backends
would also be removed since there would be only one process.

Issue of thread safety of code will come up undoubtedly and some things will
probably have to be revamped. But in long term this is probably best way if
you want to have efficient and uniform Unix AND Win32 implementations.

I am not too familiar with Win32. Speaking about POSIX threads, it would be
something like a thread pool with low & high watermarks. Main thread would
handle thread pool and hand over requests to worker threads (blocked on
condvar). How does that sound?

-- igor

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bruce Momjian" <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
To: "PostgreSQL-development" <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Sent: Tuesday, June 04, 2002 11:33 PM
Subject: [HACKERS] Roadmap for a Win32 port


> OK, I think I am now caught up on the Win32/cygwin discussion, and would
> like to make some remarks.
>
> First, are we doing enough to support the Win32 platform?  I think the
> answer is clearly "no".  There are 3-5 groups/companies working on Win32
> ports of PostgreSQL.  We always said there would not be PostgreSQL forks
> if we were doing our job to meet user needs.  Well, obviously, a number
> of groups see a need for a better Win32 port and we aren't meeting that
> need, so they are.  I believe this is one of the few cases where groups
> are going out on their own because we are falling behind.
>
> So, there is no question in my mind we need to do more to encourage
> Win32 ports.  Now, on to the details.
>
> INSTALLER
> ---------
>
> We clearly need an installer that is zero-hassle for users.  We need to
> decide on a direction for this.
>
> GUI
> ---
>
> We need a slick GUI.  pgadmin2 seems to be everyone's favorite, with
> pgaccess on Win32 also an option.  What else do we need here?
>
> BINARY
> ------
>
> This is the big daddy.   It is broken down into several sections:
>
> FORK()
>
> How do we handle fork()?  Do we use the cygwin method that copies the
> whole data segment, or put the global data in shared memory and copy
> that small part manually after we create a new process?
>
> THREADING
>
> Related to fork(), do we implement an optionally threaded postmaster,
> which eliminates CreateProcess() entirely?  I don't think we will have
> superior performance on Win32 without it.  (This would greatly help
> Solaris as well.)
>
> IPC
>
> We can use Cygwin, MinGW, Apache, or our own code for this. Are there
> other options?
>
> ENVIRONMENT
>
> Lots of our code requires a unix shell and utilities.  Will we continue
> using cygwin for this?
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
>
> As a roadmap, it would be good to get consensus on as many of these
> items as possible so people can start working in these areas.  We can
> keep a web page of decisions we have made to help rally developers to
> the project.
>
> --
>   Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
>   pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
>   +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
>   +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M23416@postgresql.org Wed Jun  5 16:05:36 2002
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From: Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
Message-ID: <200206052005.g55K52615577@candle.pha.pa.us>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Roadmap for a Win32 port
In-Reply-To: <11f301c20cc7$b1f73a70$22c30191@comm.mot.com>
To: Igor Kovalenko <Igor.Kovalenko@motorola.com>
Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2002 16:05:02 -0400 (EDT)
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Igor Kovalenko wrote:
> I might be naive here, but would not proper threading model remove the need
> for fork() altogether? On both Unix and Win32? Should not be too hard to
> come up with abstraction which encapsulates POSIX, BeOS and Win32 threads...
> I am not sure how universal POSIX threads are by now. Any important Unix
> platforms which don't support them yet?
> 
> This has downside of letting any bug to kill the whole thing. On the bright
> side, performance should be better on some platforms (note however, Apache
> group still can't come up with implementation of threaded model which would
> provide better performance than forked or other models). The need to deal
> with possibility of 'alien' postmaster running along with orphaned backends
> would also be removed since there would be only one process.
> 
> Issue of thread safety of code will come up undoubtedly and some things will
> probably have to be revamped. But in long term this is probably best way if
> you want to have efficient and uniform Unix AND Win32 implementations.
> 
> I am not too familiar with Win32. Speaking about POSIX threads, it would be
> something like a thread pool with low & high watermarks. Main thread would
> handle thread pool and hand over requests to worker threads (blocked on
> condvar). How does that sound?

Good summary.  I think we would support both threaded and fork()
operation, and users can control which they prefer.  For a web backend
where many sessions are a single query, people may want to give up the
stability of fork() and go with threads, even on Unix.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

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From thomas@fourpalms.org Wed Jun  5 18:02:46 2002
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Date: Wed, 05 Jun 2002 15:02:33 -0700
From: Thomas Lockhart <thomas@fourpalms.org>
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To: Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
cc: Igor Kovalenko <Igor.Kovalenko@motorola.com>,
   PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Roadmap for a Win32 port
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...
> Good summary.  I think we would support both threaded and fork()
> operation, and users can control which they prefer.  For a web backend
> where many sessions are a single query, people may want to give up the
> stability of fork() and go with threads, even on Unix.

I would think that we would build on our strengths of having a fork/exec
model for separate clients. A threaded model *could* benefit individual
clients who are doing queries on multiprocessor servers, and I would be
supportive of efforts to enable that.

But the requirements for that may be less severe than for managing
multiple clients within the same process, and imho there is not strong
requirement to enable the latter for our current crop of well supported
targets. If it came for free then great, but if it came with a high cost
then the choice is not as obvious. It is also not a *requirement* if we
were instead able to do the multiple threads for a single client
scenerio first.

                  - Thomas

From pgsql-hackers-owner+M23421@postgresql.org Wed Jun  5 18:42:44 2002
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From: Thomas Lockhart <thomas@fourpalms.org>
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cc: Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>,
   Igor Kovalenko <Igor.Kovalenko@motorola.com>,
   PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Roadmap for a Win32 port
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...
> Notion:
> Have one version do both.  Your server can fork(), and your sever can
> thread.  It can fork() and thread, it can fork() or thread.
> That gives the best of all worlds.  One client who has his attachments
> to a database all setup might want to do a bunch of similar queries.
> Hence a threaded model is nice.
> A server may be set up to clone the rights of the attaching process for
> security reasons.  Then you launch a new server with fork().

Right. If/when that is possible then let's do it, as long as the cost is
not too high. But the intermediate steps are a possibility also, and are
not precluded from discussion.

This will all work out as a *convergence* of interests imho. And there
is no great identifiable benefit for our current crop of platforms for
going to a threaded model *unless* that enables queries for a single
client to execute in parallel (all imho of course ;). 

So our convergence of interests for all platforms is in enabling
threading for these two purposes, and focusing on enabling the
multithreaded single client *first* means that the current crop of
clients don't have to accept all negatives while we start on the road to
better support of Win32 machines.

                  - Thomas

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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M23422@postgresql.org Wed Jun  5 19:23:03 2002
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Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Roadmap for a Win32 port
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One note: SGI developers discovered they could get amazing performance using
as hybrid threaded and forked-process model with apache - we might want to
look into this.  They even have a library for network-communication
utilizing thier 'state threads' model.  Please see:

http://state-threads.sourceforge.net/docs/st.html

Thus, on platforms where it can be supported, we should keep in mind that a
hybrid multiprocess/multithreaded postgresql might be the fastest
solution...


----- Original Message -----
From: "Bruce Momjian" <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
To: "Igor Kovalenko" <Igor.Kovalenko@motorola.com>
Cc: "PostgreSQL-development" <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Sent: Wednesday, June 05, 2002 4:05 PM
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Roadmap for a Win32 port


> Igor Kovalenko wrote:
> > I might be naive here, but would not proper threading model remove the
need
> > for fork() altogether? On both Unix and Win32? Should not be too hard to
> > come up with abstraction which encapsulates POSIX, BeOS and Win32
threads...
> > I am not sure how universal POSIX threads are by now. Any important Unix
> > platforms which don't support them yet?
> >
> > This has downside of letting any bug to kill the whole thing. On the
bright
> > side, performance should be better on some platforms (note however,
Apache
> > group still can't come up with implementation of threaded model which
would
> > provide better performance than forked or other models). The need to
deal
> > with possibility of 'alien' postmaster running along with orphaned
backends
> > would also be removed since there would be only one process.
> >
> > Issue of thread safety of code will come up undoubtedly and some things
will
> > probably have to be revamped. But in long term this is probably best way
if
> > you want to have efficient and uniform Unix AND Win32 implementations.
> >
> > I am not too familiar with Win32. Speaking about POSIX threads, it would
be
> > something like a thread pool with low & high watermarks. Main thread
would
> > handle thread pool and hand over requests to worker threads (blocked on
> > condvar). How does that sound?
>
> Good summary.  I think we would support both threaded and fork()
> operation, and users can control which they prefer.  For a web backend
> where many sessions are a single query, people may want to give up the
> stability of fork() and go with threads, even on Unix.
>
> --
>   Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
>   pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
>   +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
>   +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026
>
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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M23423@postgresql.org Wed Jun  5 20:10:50 2002
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Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2002 20:05:44 -0400
From: Neil Conway <nconway@klamath.dyndns.org>
To: "Jon Franz" <coventry@one.net>
cc: pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Roadmap for a Win32 port
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On Wed, 5 Jun 2002 18:50:46 -0400
"Jon Franz" <coventry@one.net> wrote:
> One note: SGI developers discovered they could get amazing performance using
> as hybrid threaded and forked-process model with apache - we might want to
> look into this.  They even have a library for network-communication
> utilizing thier 'state threads' model.

I think ST is designed for network I/O-bound apps -- last I checked,
disk I/O will still block an entire ST process. While you can get around
that by using another process to do disk I/O, it sounds like ST won't be
that useful.

However, Chris KL. (I believe) raised the idea of using POSIX AIO for
PostgreSQL. Without having looked into it extensively, this technique
sounds promising. Perhaps someone who has looked into this further
(e.g. someone from Redhat) can comment?

Cheers,

Neil

-- 
Neil Conway <neilconway@rogers.com>
PGP Key ID: DB3C29FC

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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M23424@postgresql.org Wed Jun  5 20:56:59 2002
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From: "Nicolas Bazin" <nbazin@ingenico.com.au>
To: "Jon Franz" <coventry@one.net>, <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
References: <200206052005.g55K52615577@candle.pha.pa.us> <001201c20ce3$6e21bed0$a1ed03c7@dev.ngcn>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Roadmap for a Win32 port
Date: Thu, 6 Jun 2002 10:50:09 +1000
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Yes I proposed to use the GNU Pth library instead. It's an event
demultiplexer just like the sgi library, but has a posix thread interface.
This architecture is actually the more robust and also the more scalable. On
a single processor server, you don't have the multi-thread synchronization
and context switching overhead and you also take full advantage of
multi-processor servers when you create several processes. Plus you have
much less concern about global variables.

Also for those concerned about the licence of this library here is an
abstract of it:
"The author places this library under the LGPL to make sure that it
can be used both commercially and non-commercially provided that
modifications to the code base are always donated back to the official
code base under the same license conditions. Please keep in mind that
especially using this library in code not staying under the GPL or
the LGPL _is_ allowed and that any taint or license creap into code
that uses the library is not the authors intention. It is just the
case that _including_ this library into the source tree of other
applications is a little bit more inconvinient because of the LGPL.
But it has to be this way for good reasons. And keep in mind that
inconvinient doesn't mean not allowed or even impossible."

So it can be used in both commercial and non commercial project.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Jon Franz" <coventry@one.net>
To: <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Sent: Thursday, June 06, 2002 8:50 AM
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Roadmap for a Win32 port


> One note: SGI developers discovered they could get amazing performance
using
> as hybrid threaded and forked-process model with apache - we might want to
> look into this.  They even have a library for network-communication
> utilizing thier 'state threads' model.  Please see:
>
> http://state-threads.sourceforge.net/docs/st.html
>
> Thus, on platforms where it can be supported, we should keep in mind that
a
> hybrid multiprocess/multithreaded postgresql might be the fastest
> solution...
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Bruce Momjian" <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
> To: "Igor Kovalenko" <Igor.Kovalenko@motorola.com>
> Cc: "PostgreSQL-development" <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, June 05, 2002 4:05 PM
> Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Roadmap for a Win32 port
>
>
> > Igor Kovalenko wrote:
> > > I might be naive here, but would not proper threading model remove the
> need
> > > for fork() altogether? On both Unix and Win32? Should not be too hard
to
> > > come up with abstraction which encapsulates POSIX, BeOS and Win32
> threads...
> > > I am not sure how universal POSIX threads are by now. Any important
Unix
> > > platforms which don't support them yet?
> > >
> > > This has downside of letting any bug to kill the whole thing. On the
> bright
> > > side, performance should be better on some platforms (note however,
> Apache
> > > group still can't come up with implementation of threaded model which
> would
> > > provide better performance than forked or other models). The need to
> deal
> > > with possibility of 'alien' postmaster running along with orphaned
> backends
> > > would also be removed since there would be only one process.
> > >
> > > Issue of thread safety of code will come up undoubtedly and some
things
> will
> > > probably have to be revamped. But in long term this is probably best
way
> if
> > > you want to have efficient and uniform Unix AND Win32 implementations.
> > >
> > > I am not too familiar with Win32. Speaking about POSIX threads, it
would
> be
> > > something like a thread pool with low & high watermarks. Main thread
> would
> > > handle thread pool and hand over requests to worker threads (blocked
on
> > > condvar). How does that sound?
> >
> > Good summary.  I think we would support both threaded and fork()
> > operation, and users can control which they prefer.  For a web backend
> > where many sessions are a single query, people may want to give up the
> > stability of fork() and go with threads, even on Unix.
> >
> > --
> >   Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
> >   pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
> >   +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
> >   +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania
19026
> >
> > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> > TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to majordomo@postgresql.org
>
>
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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M23425@postgresql.org Wed Jun  5 21:01:51 2002
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From: Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
Message-ID: <200206060053.g560rF010370@candle.pha.pa.us>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Roadmap for a Win32 port
In-Reply-To: <20020605200544.4a486fe4.nconway@klamath.dyndns.org>
To: Neil Conway <nconway@klamath.dyndns.org>
Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2002 20:53:15 -0400 (EDT)
cc: Jon Franz <coventry@one.net>, pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
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Neil Conway wrote:
> On Wed, 5 Jun 2002 18:50:46 -0400
> "Jon Franz" <coventry@one.net> wrote:
> > One note: SGI developers discovered they could get amazing performance using
> > as hybrid threaded and forked-process model with apache - we might want to
> > look into this.  They even have a library for network-communication
> > utilizing thier 'state threads' model.
> 
> I think ST is designed for network I/O-bound apps -- last I checked,
> disk I/O will still block an entire ST process. While you can get around
> that by using another process to do disk I/O, it sounds like ST won't be
> that useful.
> 
> However, Chris KL. (I believe) raised the idea of using POSIX AIO for
> PostgreSQL. Without having looked into it extensively, this technique
> sounds promising. Perhaps someone who has looked into this further
> (e.g. someone from Redhat) can comment?

I know Red Hat is interested in AIO.  Only a few OS's support it so it
was hard to get exited about it at the time, but with threading, a
AIO-specific module could be attempted.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M23426@postgresql.org Wed Jun  5 21:07:19 2002
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Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2002 22:05:11 -0300
From: Steve Howe <howe@carcass.dhs.org>
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To: Thomas Lockhart <thomas@fourpalms.org>
cc: Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>,
   Igor Kovalenko <Igor.Kovalenko@motorola.com>,
   PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Roadmap for a Win32 port
In-Reply-To: <3CFE8A79.84738F2F@fourpalms.org>
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Hello Thomas,

Wednesday, June 5, 2002, 7:02:33 PM, you wrote:

TL> ...
>> Good summary.  I think we would support both threaded and fork()
>> operation, and users can control which they prefer.  For a web backend
>> where many sessions are a single query, people may want to give up the
>> stability of fork() and go with threads, even on Unix.

TL> I would think that we would build on our strengths of having a fork/exec
TL> model for separate clients. A threaded model *could* benefit individual
TL> clients who are doing queries on multiprocessor servers, and I would be
TL> supportive of efforts to enable that.
Just a note - this is also the solution adopted by Interbase/Firebird
and it seems interesting. They already had the same problems
PostgreSQL has been under today.
Those interested in read about Interbase's architeture, please refer
to http://community.borland.com/article/0,1410,23217,00.html.
"Classic" is the fork() model, and the "SuperServer" is the threaded
model.
-------------
Best regards,
 Steve Howe                           mailto:howe@carcass.dhs.org


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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M23427@postgresql.org Wed Jun  5 21:24:58 2002
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Message-ID: <002001c20cf8$a6b86400$660d090a@software.ingenico.com.au>
From: "Nicolas Bazin" <nbazin@ingenico.com.au>
To: "Nicolas Bazin" <nbazin@ingenico.com.au>, "Jon Franz" <coventry@one.net>,
   <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
References: <200206052005.g55K52615577@candle.pha.pa.us> <001201c20ce3$6e21bed0$a1ed03c7@dev.ngcn> <004301c20cf4$1b8d8c10$660d090a@software.ingenico.com.au>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Roadmap for a Win32 port
Date: Thu, 6 Jun 2002 11:22:40 +1000
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Gnu Pth also supports AIO
----- Original Message -----
From: "Nicolas Bazin" <nbazin@ingenico.com.au>
To: "Jon Franz" <coventry@one.net>; <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Sent: Thursday, June 06, 2002 10:50 AM
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Roadmap for a Win32 port


> Yes I proposed to use the GNU Pth library instead. It's an event
> demultiplexer just like the sgi library, but has a posix thread interface.
> This architecture is actually the more robust and also the more scalable.
On
> a single processor server, you don't have the multi-thread synchronization
> and context switching overhead and you also take full advantage of
> multi-processor servers when you create several processes. Plus you have
> much less concern about global variables.
>
> Also for those concerned about the licence of this library here is an
> abstract of it:
> "The author places this library under the LGPL to make sure that it
> can be used both commercially and non-commercially provided that
> modifications to the code base are always donated back to the official
> code base under the same license conditions. Please keep in mind that
> especially using this library in code not staying under the GPL or
> the LGPL _is_ allowed and that any taint or license creap into code
> that uses the library is not the authors intention. It is just the
> case that _including_ this library into the source tree of other
> applications is a little bit more inconvinient because of the LGPL.
> But it has to be this way for good reasons. And keep in mind that
> inconvinient doesn't mean not allowed or even impossible."
>
> So it can be used in both commercial and non commercial project.
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jon Franz" <coventry@one.net>
> To: <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
> Sent: Thursday, June 06, 2002 8:50 AM
> Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Roadmap for a Win32 port
>
>
> > One note: SGI developers discovered they could get amazing performance
> using
> > as hybrid threaded and forked-process model with apache - we might want
to
> > look into this.  They even have a library for network-communication
> > utilizing thier 'state threads' model.  Please see:
> >
> > http://state-threads.sourceforge.net/docs/st.html
> >
> > Thus, on platforms where it can be supported, we should keep in mind
that
> a
> > hybrid multiprocess/multithreaded postgresql might be the fastest
> > solution...
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Bruce Momjian" <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
> > To: "Igor Kovalenko" <Igor.Kovalenko@motorola.com>
> > Cc: "PostgreSQL-development" <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
> > Sent: Wednesday, June 05, 2002 4:05 PM
> > Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Roadmap for a Win32 port
> >
> >
> > > Igor Kovalenko wrote:
> > > > I might be naive here, but would not proper threading model remove
the
> > need
> > > > for fork() altogether? On both Unix and Win32? Should not be too
hard
> to
> > > > come up with abstraction which encapsulates POSIX, BeOS and Win32
> > threads...
> > > > I am not sure how universal POSIX threads are by now. Any important
> Unix
> > > > platforms which don't support them yet?
> > > >
> > > > This has downside of letting any bug to kill the whole thing. On the
> > bright
> > > > side, performance should be better on some platforms (note however,
> > Apache
> > > > group still can't come up with implementation of threaded model
which
> > would
> > > > provide better performance than forked or other models). The need to
> > deal
> > > > with possibility of 'alien' postmaster running along with orphaned
> > backends
> > > > would also be removed since there would be only one process.
> > > >
> > > > Issue of thread safety of code will come up undoubtedly and some
> things
> > will
> > > > probably have to be revamped. But in long term this is probably best
> way
> > if
> > > > you want to have efficient and uniform Unix AND Win32
implementations.
> > > >
> > > > I am not too familiar with Win32. Speaking about POSIX threads, it
> would
> > be
> > > > something like a thread pool with low & high watermarks. Main thread
> > would
> > > > handle thread pool and hand over requests to worker threads (blocked
> on
> > > > condvar). How does that sound?
> > >
> > > Good summary.  I think we would support both threaded and fork()
> > > operation, and users can control which they prefer.  For a web backend
> > > where many sessions are a single query, people may want to give up the
> > > stability of fork() and go with threads, even on Unix.
> > >
> > > --
> > >   Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
> > >   pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
> > >   +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
> > >   +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania
> 19026
> > >
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broadcast)---------------------------
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majordomo@postgresql.org
> >
> >
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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M23428@postgresql.org Wed Jun  5 21:36:56 2002
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Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2002 22:37:17 -0300
From: Steve Howe <howe@carcass.dhs.org>
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To: Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
cc: PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Roadmap for a Win32 port
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Hello Bruce,

Wednesday, June 5, 2002, 1:33:44 AM, you wrote:

BM> INSTALLER
BM> ---------

BM> We clearly need an installer that is zero-hassle for users.  We need to
BM> decide on a direction for this.
I suggest Nullsoft install system
(http://www.nullsoft.com/free/nsis/). It's real good and very simple
to use. I can help on this if you want.

BM> ENVIRONMENT

BM> Lots of our code requires a unix shell and utilities.  Will we continue
BM> using cygwin for this?
There are other ports ( http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/ ) that won't
require Cygwin but they won't provide an environment so complete as
Cygwin does.

I also would like to empathize that probably a small GUI for
controlling the PostgreSQL service/application would be nice. I think
about something sitting in the system tray like MSSQL, Oracle,
Interbase, etc. does.
I could code this in Delphi if you like. I don't have experience in
writing GUI apps in C. There is an open source versions of Delphi so
it won't be a problem compiling it.
Also coming with this, a code for starting the PostgreSQL as a service
would be really nice. For those from UNIX world that don't know what a
service is, think about it as a daemon for Windows. A service can be
automatically started when the machine boots up.

-------------
Best regards,
 Steve Howe                           mailto:howe@carcass.dhs.org


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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M23429@postgresql.org Wed Jun  5 22:54:37 2002
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From: "Igor Kovalenko" <Igor.Kovalenko@motorola.com>
To: "Neil Conway" <nconway@klamath.dyndns.org>, "Jon Franz" <coventry@one.net>
cc: <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
References: <200206052005.g55K52615577@candle.pha.pa.us><001201c20ce3$6e21bed0$a1ed03c7@dev.ngcn> <20020605200544.4a486fe4.nconway@klamath.dyndns.org>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Roadmap for a Win32 port
Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2002 21:54:29 -0500
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I think SGI gets amazing performance because they have very good (efficient)
synchronisation primitives on SGI. Some proprietary light-weight mutexes.
Using threaded or mixed model just by itself is not going to do a miracle.
Threads will save you some context switch time, but that will probably
translate into lower CPU usage rather than performance boost. And if your
mutexes are not fast or awkwardly implemented (say Linux), it might be even
worse. Apache is not all that fast on Linux as on SGI, whatever model you
chose. I also doubt that purely threaded model would be slower than mixed
one.

Now about the AIO model. It is useful when you need to do something else
while I/O requests are being processed as long as platform does it in some
useful way. If all you can do is to submit requests and keep sitting in
select/poll then AIO does not buy you anything you can't get by just using
threaded model. However, if you can tag the requests and set up
notifications, then few I/O threads could handle relatively large number of
requests from different clients. Note, this means you don't have any
association between clients and servers at all, there is pool of generic I/O
threads which serve requests from whoever they come. It saves system
resources and scales very well. It also provides interesting possibilities
for fault recovery - since handlers are generic all the state information
would have to be kept in some kind of global context area. That area can be
saved into persistent memory or dumped onto disk and *recovered* after a
forced restart. Server and library could be designed in such a way that
clients may continue where they left with a recoverable error.

In POSIX AIO model you can tag requests and set up notifications via
synchronous signals. You wait for them *synchronously* in 'waiter' thread
via sigwaitinfo() and avoid the headache of asynchronous signals hitting you
any time...  Unfortunately on some platforms (Solaris) the depth of
synchronous signal queue is fixed at magic value 32 (and not adjustable).
This may not be a problem if you're sure that waiting thread will be able to
drain the queue faster than it gets filled with notifications... but I'm not
sure there is a portable way to guarantee that, so you need to check for
overloads and handle them... that complicates things. On Solaris you also
need a mile of compiler/linker switches to even get this scheme to work and
I am afraid other platforms may not support it at all (but then again, they
may not support AIO to begin with).

And speaking about getting best of all worlds. Note how Apache spent nearly
3 years developing their portable Multi-Processing Modules scheme. What they
got for that is handful of models neither of which perform noticeably better
than original pre-fork() model. Trying to swallow all possible ways to
handle things on all possible platforms usually does not produce very fast
code. It tends to produce very complex code with mediocre performance and
introduces extra complexity into configuration process. If you consider all
that was done mostly to support Win32, one might doubt if it was worth the
while.

What I am trying to say is, extra complexity in model to squeeze few percent
of performance is not a wise investment of time and efforts. On Win32 you
don't really compete in terms of performance. You compete in terms of
easyness and features. Spend 3 years trying to support Windows and Unix in
most optimal way including all subvariants of Unix ... meanwhile MSFT will
come up with some bundled SQL server. It probably will have more features
since they will spend time doing features rather than inventing a model to
support gazillion of platforms. Chances are, it will be faster too - due to
better integration with OS and better compiler.

I am not in position to tell you what to do guys. But if I was asked, I'd
say supporting Win32 is only worth it if it comes as a natural result of a
simple, coherent and uniform model applied to Unix. Threaded model may not
have as much inherent stability as forked/mixed, but it has inherent
simplicity and better Unix/Windows/BeOS portability. It can be done faster
and simpler code will make work on features easier.

Regards,
- Igor

"There are 2 ways to design an efficient system - first is to design it so
complex that there are no obvious deficiencies, second is to design it so
simple that there are obviously no deficiencies. Second way is much harder"
(author unknown to me)


----- Original Message -----
From: "Neil Conway" <nconway@klamath.dyndns.org>
To: "Jon Franz" <coventry@one.net>
Cc: <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Sent: Wednesday, June 05, 2002 7:05 PM
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Roadmap for a Win32 port


> On Wed, 5 Jun 2002 18:50:46 -0400
> "Jon Franz" <coventry@one.net> wrote:
> > One note: SGI developers discovered they could get amazing performance
using
> > as hybrid threaded and forked-process model with apache - we might want
to
> > look into this.  They even have a library for network-communication
> > utilizing thier 'state threads' model.
>
> I think ST is designed for network I/O-bound apps -- last I checked,
> disk I/O will still block an entire ST process. While you can get around
> that by using another process to do disk I/O, it sounds like ST won't be
> that useful.
>
> However, Chris KL. (I believe) raised the idea of using POSIX AIO for
> PostgreSQL. Without having looked into it extensively, this technique
> sounds promising. Perhaps someone who has looked into this further
> (e.g. someone from Redhat) can comment?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Neil
>
> --
> Neil Conway <neilconway@rogers.com>
> PGP Key ID: DB3C29FC
>
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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M23430@postgresql.org Wed Jun  5 22:58:30 2002
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From: Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
Message-ID: <200206060257.g562v0q28990@candle.pha.pa.us>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Roadmap for a Win32 port
In-Reply-To: <200206050433.g554XiN05245@candle.pha.pa.us>
To: PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2002 22:57:00 -0400 (EDT)
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Here is a summary of the responses to my Win32 roadmap.  I hope this
will allow further discussion.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

INSTALLER
---------
Cygwin Setup.exe                        http://cygwin.com
Nullsoft                                http://www.nullsoft.com/free/nsis/

GUI
---
pgAdmin2                                http://pgadmin.postgresql.org/pgadmin2.php?ContentID=1
pgaccess                                http://pgaccess.org/
Java admin (to be written)
Dev-C++ admin (to be written)           http://sourceforge.net/projects/dev-cpp/

BINARY
------


FORK()

cygwin fork()                           http://cygwin.com
CreateProcess() and copy global area

THREADING

Posix threads
Gnu pth                                 http://www.gnu.org/software/pth/
ST                                      http://state-threads.sourceforge.net/docs/st.html
(single-session multi-threading possible)
(Posix AIO is possible)

IPC

Cygwin                                  http://cygwin.com
MinGW                                   http://www.mingw.org/
ACE                                     http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/ACE.html
APR                                     http://apr.apache.org/
Our own

ENVIRONMENT

Cygwin                                  http://cygwin.com
UnxUtils                                http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/
Write own initdb


IMPLEMENTATIONS
---------------
PostgreSQLe                             http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA023283/PostgreSQLe.html
Dbexperts                               http://www.dbexperts.net/postgresql
Connx                                   http://www.connx.com/
gborg                                   http://gborg.postgresql.org/project/winpackage/projdisplay.php
Interbase                               http://community.borland.com/article/0,1410,23217,00.html

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M23432@postgresql.org Thu Jun  6 01:01:09 2002
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From: Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
Message-ID: <200206060459.g564xaS09100@candle.pha.pa.us>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Roadmap for a Win32 port
In-Reply-To: <129501c20d05$7a671a10$22c30191@comm.mot.com>
To: Igor Kovalenko <Igor.Kovalenko@motorola.com>
Date: Thu, 6 Jun 2002 00:59:36 -0400 (EDT)
cc: Neil Conway <nconway@klamath.dyndns.org>, Jon Franz <coventry@one.net>,
   pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
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Igor Kovalenko wrote:
> I think SGI gets amazing performance because they have very good (efficient)
> synchronization primitives on SGI. Some proprietary light-weight mutexes.
> Using threaded or mixed model just by itself is not going to do a miracle.
> Threads will save you some context switch time, but that will probably
> translate into lower CPU usage rather than performance boost. And if your
> mutexes are not fast or awkwardly implemented (say Linux), it might be even
> worse. Apache is not all that fast on Linux as on SGI, whatever model you
> chose. I also doubt that purely threaded model would be slower than mixed
> one.

Let me throw out an idea.  I have been mentioning full fork, light
fork(copy globals only), and threading as possible solutions.

Another idea uses neither threading nor copying.  It is the old system
we used before I removed exec() from our code.  We used to pass the
database name as an argument to an exec'ed postgres binary that
continued with the database connection.

We removed the exec, then started moving what we could into the
postmaster so each backend didn't need to do the initialization.

One solution is to return to that for Win32 only, so instead of doing:

	initialization()
	want for connection()
	fork backend()

we do for Win32:

	want for connection()
	exec backend()
	initialization()

It wouldn't be hard to do.  We would still do CreateProcess rather than
CreateThread, but it eliminates the fork/threading issues.  We don't
know the database before the connection arrives, so we don't do a whole
lot of initialization.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

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From janwieck@yahoo.com Thu Jun  6 09:40:20 2002
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From: Jan Wieck <janwieck@yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <200206061335.g56DZFt26403@saturn.janwieck.net>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Roadmap for a Win32 port
In-Reply-To: <200206060459.g564xaS09100@candle.pha.pa.us> from Bruce Momjian
	at "Jun 6, 2002 00:59:36 am"
To: Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
Date: Thu, 6 Jun 2002 09:35:14 -0400 (EDT)
cc: Igor Kovalenko <Igor.Kovalenko@motorola.com>,
   Neil Conway <nconway@klamath.dyndns.org>, Jon Franz <coventry@one.net>,
   pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
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Bruce Momjian wrote:
>
> Let me throw out an idea.  I have been mentioning full fork, light
> fork(copy globals only), and threading as possible solutions.
>
> Another idea uses neither threading nor copying.  It is the old system
> we used before I removed exec() from our code.  We used to pass the
> database name as an argument to an exec'ed postgres binary that
> continued with the database connection.
>
> We removed the exec, then started moving what we could into the
> postmaster so each backend didn't need to do the initialization.
>
> One solution is to return to that for Win32 only, so instead of doing:
>
>    initialization()
>    want for connection()
>    fork backend()
>
> we do for Win32:
>
>    want for connection()
>    exec backend()
>    initialization()

    Summarizes pretty much what we discussed Monday on the phone.
    Except that the postmaster still has to initialize the shared
    memory  and  other  stuff.  It's  just  that the backends and
    helper processes need to reinitialize themself (attach).

> It wouldn't be hard to do.  We would still do CreateProcess rather than
> CreateThread, but it eliminates the fork/threading issues.  We don't
> know the database before the connection arrives, so we don't do a whole
> lot of initialization.

    All I see so far is the reading of the  postgresql.conf,  the
    pg_hba.conf  and  the  password  files. Nothing fancy and the
    postmaster could easily write out a binary content only  file
    that   the   backends  then  read,  eliminating  the  parsing
    overhead.

    The bad news is that Tom is right. We did a terrible  job  in
    using  the new side effect, that the shared memory segment is
    at the same address in all forked processes,  after  removing
    the need to reattach.

    In  detail  the  XLog  code,  the  FreeSpaceMap  code and the
    "shared memory" hashtable code now use pointers,  located  in
    shared  memory.  For  the  XLog  and  FreeSpace  code this is
    understandable, because they where developed under the fork()
    only  model.  But  the  dynahash code used offsets only until
    v7.1!

    All three (no claim that that's all) make  it  impossible  to
    ever  have  someone  attaching  to the shared memory from the
    outside. So with these moves we  made  the  shared  memory  a
    "Postmaster  and  children" only thing.  Raises the question,
    why we need an IPC key at all any more.

    Anyhow, looks as if I can get that fork()  vs.  fork()+exec()
    feature  done  pretty  soon.  It'll  be controlled by another
    Postmaster commandline switch. After cleaning up the  mess  I
    did  to  get  it  working  quick,  I'll  provide  a patch for
    discussion.


Jan

--

#======================================================================#
# It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than for being right. #
# Let's break this rule - forgive me.                                  #
#================================================== JanWieck@Yahoo.com #



From pgsql-hackers-owner+M23442@postgresql.org Thu Jun  6 11:14:35 2002
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From: Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
Message-ID: <200206061506.g56F6IW10267@candle.pha.pa.us>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Roadmap for a Win32 port
In-Reply-To: <200206061335.g56DZFt26403@saturn.janwieck.net>
To: Jan Wieck <janwieck@yahoo.com>
Date: Thu, 6 Jun 2002 11:06:18 -0400 (EDT)
cc: Igor Kovalenko <Igor.Kovalenko@motorola.com>,
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Jan Wieck wrote:
> > One solution is to return to that for Win32 only, so instead of doing:
> >
> >    initialization()
> >    want for connection()
> >    fork backend()
> >
> > we do for Win32:
> >
> >    want for connection()
> >    exec backend()
> >    initialization()
> 
>     Summarizes pretty much what we discussed Monday on the phone.
>     Except that the postmaster still has to initialize the shared
>     memory  and  other  stuff.  It's  just  that the backends and
>     helper processes need to reinitialize themself (attach).

Yes, obviously I simplified, and I do believe our optimizations are
helping on Unix.  It is just that I think for Win32 the fork is more
harmful than removing those optimizations.

One thing that may not have been clear is that we don't need to play
with globals at all.  We just pass whatever info we want to the child
via command-line arguments, rather than shared memory.

> > It wouldn't be hard to do.  We would still do CreateProcess rather than
> > CreateThread, but it eliminates the fork/threading issues.  We don't
> > know the database before the connection arrives, so we don't do a whole
> > lot of initialization.
> 
>     All I see so far is the reading of the  postgresql.conf,  the
>     pg_hba.conf  and  the  password  files. Nothing fancy and the
>     postmaster could easily write out a binary content only  file
>     that   the   backends  then  read,  eliminating  the  parsing
>     overhead.

Yes, that is clearly possible.  Another option is to just write out a
no-comments, no-whitespace version of each file and just have the
backends read those.  The advantage is that we can use the same code to
read them, and I don't think it would be any slower than a binary file.

>     The bad news is that Tom is right. We did a terrible  job  in
>     using  the new side effect, that the shared memory segment is
>     at the same address in all forked processes,  after  removing
>     the need to reattach.
> 
>     In  detail  the  XLog  code,  the  FreeSpaceMap  code and the
>     "shared memory" hashtable code now use pointers,  located  in
>     shared  memory.  For  the  XLog  and  FreeSpace  code this is
>     understandable, because they where developed under the fork()
>     only  model.  But  the  dynahash code used offsets only until
>     v7.1!
> 
>     All three (no claim that that's all) make  it  impossible  to
>     ever  have  someone  attaching  to the shared memory from the
>     outside. So with these moves we  made  the  shared  memory  a
>     "Postmaster  and  children" only thing.  Raises the question,
>     why we need an IPC key at all any more.

Well, we could force shmat() to bind to the same address, but I suspect
that might fail in some cases.

>     Anyhow, looks as if I can get that fork()  vs.  fork()+exec()
>     feature  done  pretty  soon.  It'll  be controlled by another
>     Postmaster commandline switch. After cleaning up the  mess  I
>     did  to  get  it  working  quick,  I'll  provide  a patch for
>     discussion.

Yes, very little impact.  We then need someone to do some Win32 timings
to see if things have improved.  As Tom mentioned, we need some hard
numbers for these things.  In fact, I would like a Win32 test that takes
our code and compares fork(), then exit(), with CreateProcess(), exit().
It doesn't have create a db session, but I would like to see some
timings to know what we are gaining. Heck, time CreateThread too and
let's see what that shows.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M23447@postgresql.org Thu Jun  6 13:18:53 2002
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From: Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>
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To: Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
cc: PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Roadmap for a Win32 port
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Bruce Momjian writes:

> Lots of our code requires a unix shell and utilities.  Will we continue
> using cygwin for this?

We should probably get rid of using shell scripts for application programs
altogether, for a number of reasons besides this one, such as the
inability to properly handle input values with spaces, commas, etc. (we
probably don't handle very long values either on some platforms), the
inability to maintain open database connections so that createlang needs
to prompt for the same password thrice, general portable scripting
headaches, and the lack of internationalization facilities.

I'd even volunteer to do this.  Comments?

-- 
Peter Eisentraut   peter_e@gmx.net


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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M23453@postgresql.org Thu Jun  6 15:28:52 2002
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From: Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
Message-ID: <200206061757.g56Hv5D27106@candle.pha.pa.us>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Roadmap for a Win32 port
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To: Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>
Date: Thu, 6 Jun 2002 13:57:05 -0400 (EDT)
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Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> Bruce Momjian writes:
> 
> > Lots of our code requires a unix shell and utilities.  Will we continue
> > using cygwin for this?
> 
> We should probably get rid of using shell scripts for application programs
> altogether, for a number of reasons besides this one, such as the
> inability to properly handle input values with spaces, commas, etc. (we
> probably don't handle very long values either on some platforms), the
> inability to maintain open database connections so that createlang needs
> to prompt for the same password thrice, general portable scripting
> headaches, and the lack of internationalization facilities.
> 
> I'd even volunteer to do this.  Comments?

I know I have discouraged it because I think shell script language has a
good toolset for those applications.  I have fixed all the spacing
issues.

What language where you thinking of using?  C?

Also, it seems Win32 doesn't need these scripts, except initdb. 
PostgreSQLe didn't use the, it just did initdb, and the rest were done
using a GUI.  However, initdb would remain a problem.  PostgreSQLe wrote
its own.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

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From: "Dave Page" <dpage@vale-housing.co.uk>
To: "Steve Howe" <howe@carcass.dhs.org>,
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steve Howe [mailto:howe@carcass.dhs.org] 
> Sent: 06 June 2002 02:37
> To: Bruce Momjian
> Cc: PostgreSQL-development
> Subject: Re: Roadmap for a Win32 port
> 
> 
> Hello Bruce,
> 
> Wednesday, June 5, 2002, 1:33:44 AM, you wrote:
> 
> BM> INSTALLER
> BM> ---------
> 
> BM> We clearly need an installer that is zero-hassle for 
> users.  We need 
> BM> to decide on a direction for this.
> I suggest Nullsoft install system 
> (http://www.nullsoft.com/free/nsis/). It's > real good and very 
> simple to use. I can help on this if you want.

I think that a Windows Installer compatible package would be better as
it would allow us to build the package as a merge module which others
could use in their installers for their PostgreSQL based apps, allowing
one installation to install everything they require easily and (more
importantly) correctly. An example of this can be found in the psqlODBC
installer.

I can handle this if required.

> BM> ENVIRONMENT
> 
> I also would like to empathize that probably a small GUI for 
> controlling the PostgreSQL service/application would be nice. 

I'm happy to add such code to pgAdmin - seems like the natural thing to
do (to me at least!).

Regards, Dave.

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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M23560@postgresql.org Mon Jun 10 10:09:49 2002
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How about a SOAP interface and a web-based front end that provides the cross
platform support? My company's TIBET framework would provide a solid
foundation for this kind of admin suite. In fact, we're already in the
planning stages on doing just that.

ss

Scott Shattuck
Technical Pursuit Inc.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Eisentraut" <peter_e@gmx.net>
To: "Bruce Momjian" <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
Cc: "PostgreSQL-development" <pgsql-hackers@postgreSQL.org>
Sent: Friday, June 07, 2002 11:42 AM
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Roadmap for a Win32 port


> Bruce Momjian writes:
>
> > GUI
> > ---
> > pgAdmin2
http://pgadmin.postgresql.org/pgadmin2.php?ContentID=1
> > pgaccess                                http://pgaccess.org/
> > Java admin (to be written)
> > Dev-C++ admin (to be written)
http://sourceforge.net/projects/dev-cpp/
>
> Surely Unix folks would like a GUI as well?
>
> --
> Peter Eisentraut   peter_e@gmx.net
>
>
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Bruce Momjian writes:

> I know I have discouraged it because I think shell script language has a
> good toolset for those applications.  I have fixed all the spacing
> issues.

My point is that it is not, for the reasons that I listed.  Handling
spaces is a small part of one of the several problems, there are problems
with newlines, tabs, commas, slashes, quotes -- everytime you call sed or
read you lose one character.

> What language where you thinking of using?  C?

Yes, that way we can share code (pg_dumpall<->pg_dump, initdb<->postgres),
use the established internationalization facilities, and use libpq
directly in create* and drop*.

> Also, it seems Win32 doesn't need these scripts, except initdb.

The utility of these programs is independent of the platform.  If we think
pg_dumpall is not useful, then let's remove it.

-- 
Peter Eisentraut   peter_e@gmx.net


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From tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us Sat Jun  8 11:48:49 2002
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To: Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>
cc: Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>,
   PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Roadmap for a Win32 port 
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0206072008310.935-100000@localhost.localdomain> 
References: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0206072008310.935-100000@localhost.localdomain>
Comments: In-reply-to Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>
	message dated "Sat, 08 Jun 2002 00:27:59 +0200"
Date: Sat, 08 Jun 2002 11:48:20 -0400
Message-ID: <13966.1023551300@sss.pgh.pa.us>
From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Status: ROr

Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> writes:
>> Also, it seems Win32 doesn't need these scripts, except initdb.

> The utility of these programs is independent of the platform.  If we think
> pg_dumpall is not useful, then let's remove it.

I have been seriously considering converting pg_dumpall to C anyway,
because it's already *very* messy, and I don't see any reasonable
way to make it support dumping per-database and per-user config
settings.  (Do you really want to try to parse array values in a
shell script?)

(I'd actually consider making pg_dumpall a part of the pg_dump
executable; then it could invoke pg_dump as a subroutine call...)

If Peter's got the time/energy to convert 'em all, I'm for it.

			regards, tom lane

From pgsql-hackers-owner+M23524@postgresql.org Sat Jun  8 17:48:57 2002
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From: Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
Message-ID: <200206082148.g58LmCa13018@candle.pha.pa.us>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Roadmap for a Win32 port
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0206072008310.935-100000@localhost.localdomain>
To: Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>
Date: Sat, 8 Jun 2002 17:48:12 -0400 (EDT)
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Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> Bruce Momjian writes:
> 
> > I know I have discouraged it because I think shell script language has a
> > good toolset for those applications.  I have fixed all the spacing
> > issues.
> 
> My point is that it is not, for the reasons that I listed.  Handling
> spaces is a small part of one of the several problems, there are problems
> with newlines, tabs, commas, slashes, quotes -- everytime you call sed or
> read you lose one character.
> 
> > What language where you thinking of using?  C?
> 
> Yes, that way we can share code (pg_dumpall<->pg_dump, initdb<->postgres),
> use the established internationalization facilities, and use libpq
> directly in create* and drop*.
> 
> > Also, it seems Win32 doesn't need these scripts, except initdb.
> 
> The utility of these programs is independent of the platform.  If we think
> pg_dumpall is not useful, then let's remove it.

I think the first two targets for C-ification would be pg_dumpall and
initdb.  The others have SQL equivalents.  Maybe pg_ctl too.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 853-3000
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  830 Blythe Avenue
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026

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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M23541@postgresql.org Sun Jun  9 07:10:14 2002
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Thread-Topic: Roadmap for a Win32 port
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From: "Dave Page" <dpage@vale-housing.co.uk>
To: "Bruce Momjian" <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>,
   "Peter Eisentraut" <peter_e@gmx.net>
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bruce Momjian [mailto:pgman@candle.pha.pa.us] 
> Sent: 08 June 2002 22:48
> To: Peter Eisentraut
> Cc: PostgreSQL-development
> Subject: Re: Roadmap for a Win32 port
> 
> 
> > 
> > > Also, it seems Win32 doesn't need these scripts, except initdb.
> > 
> > The utility of these programs is independent of the 
> platform.  If we 
> > think pg_dumpall is not useful, then let's remove it.
> 
> I think the first two targets for C-ification would be 
> pg_dumpall and initdb.  The others have SQL equivalents.  
> Maybe pg_ctl too.

I looked at this issue some time ago & came to the conclusion that the
only scripts that Win32 really needed were pg_dumpall, initdb &
initlocation.

The others have SQL equivalents as you say, apart from pg_ctl which
under Windows should probably (and generally is) be replaced by the SCM
(Service Control Manager). The only thing that comes to mind that the
SCM can't do is a reload.

Regards, Dave.

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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M23406@postgresql.org Wed Jun  5 01:06:31 2002
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Subject: [HACKERS] Cooperation
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From: "Dann Corbit" <DCorbit@connx.com>
To: <sogapj@fb.freeserve.ne.jp>, <ichiro@ichiro.org>, <tosiyuki@gol.com>
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I apologize for my English language message.  I am unable to speak
Japanese.  We do have a native Japanese speaker here, who could be
called upon if necessary.

The PostgreSQL team is planning to do a native Win32 port.  Perhaps you
would like to help with the effort.  In that way, your changes will get
propagated back up the source code tree and you can gain the benefits
from future development efforts without performing any work.

We did a port to Win32 also, but your approach seems much better.  We
have very fat executables and you have a marvelous DLL approach.
Probably, the way that you perform the operations is much better.

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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M23451@postgresql.org Thu Jun  6 15:09:15 2002
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Date: Thu, 6 Jun 2002 16:38:55 +0900
From: ISHIKAWA Toshiyuki <t-ishikawa@astrodesign.co.jp>
To: "Dann Corbit" <DCorbit@connx.com>
cc: sogapj@fb.freeserve.ne.jp, ichiro@ichiro.org, pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Cooperation
Message-ID: <20020606163855.4d8f2be5.t-ishikawa@astrodesign.co.jp>
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Dann Corbit wrote:

> I apologize for my English language message.  I am unable to speak
> Japanese.  We do have a native Japanese speaker here, who could be
> called upon if necessary.

There is no need to aplogize writing an e-mail in English.
It's global standards, but some portion is a bit difficult
to understand. Anyhow, we must firstly express our thanks
for your interest in our project, though we are facing also
hard obstacles as listed on the Web site. 
  
> The PostgreSQL team is planning to do a native Win32 port.  Perhaps you
> would like to help with the effort.  In that way, your changes will get
> propagated back up the source code tree and you can gain the benefits
> from future development efforts without performing any work.

It is nice to hear that the PostgreSQL development team has also working
on this subject. Will you please illustrate the procedure more clearly how
to we contribute our effort to your project. The last four words in the
above clause mean that once we supply you with the changed source, then
everything afterwords could be handled by the team? How the copy right
will be dealt with?  

The development has been continued by the volunteer developers here,
however, we have to admit that businesses (companies) are also involved
to support those people providing time to work on the development,
not to commercialization purpose but expecting some return, e.g. earning
company's prestige. So, we have to regulate those backgrouds first based
upon your proposal. We are positive to help you with our effort anyway,
if things goes well.

> We did a port to Win32 also, but your approach seems much better.  We
> have very fat executables and you have a marvelous DLL approach.
> Probably, the way that you perform the operations is much better.

Thanks.

Toshi


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From dpage@vale-housing.co.uk Sun Jun  9 06:38:29 2002
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From: "Dave Page" <dpage@vale-housing.co.uk>
To: "Bruce Momjian" <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>,
   "Peter Eisentraut" <peter_e@gmx.net>
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bruce Momjian [mailto:pgman@candle.pha.pa.us] 
> Sent: 08 June 2002 22:48
> To: Peter Eisentraut
> Cc: PostgreSQL-development
> Subject: Re: Roadmap for a Win32 port
> 
> 
> > 
> > > Also, it seems Win32 doesn't need these scripts, except initdb.
> > 
> > The utility of these programs is independent of the 
> platform.  If we 
> > think pg_dumpall is not useful, then let's remove it.
> 
> I think the first two targets for C-ification would be 
> pg_dumpall and initdb.  The others have SQL equivalents.  
> Maybe pg_ctl too.

I looked at this issue some time ago & came to the conclusion that the
only scripts that Win32 really needed were pg_dumpall, initdb &
initlocation.

The others have SQL equivalents as you say, apart from pg_ctl which
under Windows should probably (and generally is) be replaced by the SCM
(Service Control Manager). The only thing that comes to mind that the
SCM can't do is a reload.

Regards, Dave.

From pgsql-hackers-owner+M23620@postgresql.org Tue Jun 11 10:20:54 2002
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Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2002 16:19:21 +0200
From: "Ulrich Neumann" <U_Neumann@gne.de>
To: <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: [HACKERS] Native Win32/OS2/BeOS/NetWare ports
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Status: RO

Hello together

i've seen a lot of discussion about a native win32/OS2/BEOS port of
PostgreSQL.

During the last months i've ported PostgreSQL over to Novell NetWare
and i've
changed the code that I use pthreads instead of fork() now.

I had a lot of work with the variables and cleanup but mayor parts are
done.

I would appreciate if we could combine this work.

My plan was to finish this port, discuss the port with other people and
offer all the work
to the PostgreSQL source tree, but now i'm jumping in here because of
all the discussions.

What i've done in detail:
- i've defined #USE_PTHREADS in pg_config.h to differentiate between
the forked and the
threaded backend.
- I've added several parts in postmaster.c so all functions are based
on pthreads now.
- I've changed the signal handling because signals are process based
- I've changed code in ipc.c to have a clean shutdown of threads
- I've written some functions to switch the global variables. The
globals are controled with
POSIX semaphores.
- I've written a new implementation of shared memory and semaphores-
With pthreads I don't
need real shared memory any more and i'm using POSIX semaphores now
- Several minor changes.

There is still some more work to do like fixing memory leaks or
handling bad situations, but in general it's
functional on NetWare.

BTW: Is it possible to add some lines on the PostgreSQL webpage that
there is a first beta of
PostgreSQL for NetWare available and to offer a binary download for the
NetWare version?

Ulrich Neumann


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Message-ID: <00c901c21173$e5f95870$22c30191@comm.mot.com>
From: "Igor Kovalenko" <Igor.Kovalenko@motorola.com>
To: "Ulrich Neumann" <U_Neumann@gne.de>, <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
References: <sd06231b.068@mail.gne.de>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Native Win32/OS2/BeOS/NetWare ports
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2002 13:14:58 -0500
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> Hello together
>
> i've seen a lot of discussion about a native win32/OS2/BEOS port of
> PostgreSQL.
>
> During the last months i've ported PostgreSQL over to Novell NetWare
> and i've
> changed the code that I use pthreads instead of fork() now.
>
> I had a lot of work with the variables and cleanup but mayor parts are
> done.
>
> I would appreciate if we could combine this work.

Very nice... I have patches for QNX6 which also involved redoing shared
memory and sempahores stuff. It would make very good sense to intergate,
especially since you managed to do something very close to what I wanted :)

> My plan was to finish this port, discuss the port with other people and
> offer all the work
> to the PostgreSQL source tree, but now i'm jumping in here because of
> all the discussions.
>
> What i've done in detail:
> - i've defined #USE_PTHREADS in pg_config.h to differentiate between
> the forked and the
> threaded backend.
> - I've added several parts in postmaster.c so all functions are based
> on pthreads now.
> - I've changed the signal handling because signals are process based

Careful here. On certain systems (on many, I suspect) POSIX semantics for
signals is NOT default. Enforcing POSIX semantics requires certain compile
time switches which will also change behavior of various functions.

> - I've changed code in ipc.c to have a clean shutdown of threads
> - I've written some functions to switch the global variables. The
> globals are controled with
> POSIX semaphores.
> - I've written a new implementation of shared memory and semaphores-
> With pthreads I don't
> need real shared memory any more and i'm using POSIX semaphores now

POSIX semaphores for what? I assume by the conext that you're talking about
replacing SysV semaphores which are used to control access to shared memory.
If that is the case, POSIX semaphores are not the best choice really. POSIX
mutexes would be okay, but on SMP systems spinlocks (hardware TAS based
macros or POSIX spinlocks) would probably be better anyway. Note that on
most platforms spinlocks are used for that  and SysV semaphores were just a
'last resort' which had unacceptable performance and so I guess it was not
used at all.

Do you have your patch somewhere online?

-- igor



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From pgsql-hackers-owner+M23662@postgresql.org Wed Jun 12 04:38:26 2002
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Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 10:35:24 +0200
From: "Ulrich Neumann" <U_Neumann@gne.de>
To: <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: Antw: Re: [HACKERS] Native Win32/OS2/BeOS/NetWare ports
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Hi Igor,

Thanks for your information.

I was aware of the "signal" problems and i've done it with thread based
signals
This part is functional on my platform but it isn't fully cooked.
Another problem
is to make this part portable.

Your assumption to replace SysV semaphores with POSIX semaphores is
correct.
My first guess was to use mutexes instead of semaphores at all because
the
way semaphores are used in Postgres is more something like a "mutex",
but only semaphores worked for me at this time because the underlying
C Library had some problems with mutexes and spinlocks. (I'm also
working on a new C Library for a future OS).

Actually I don't have my code downloadable somewhere because the code
doesn't look very nice in some parts. There is also temporary debug
code
in it right now. The best I think is to send it to you via email. If
this is OK
please give me a short notice or send an email to me and I'll send you
a
copy.

Ulrich

>>> "Igor Kovalenko" <Igor.Kovalenko@motorola.com> 11.06.2002 20:14:58
>>>
> Hello together
>
> i've seen a lot of discussion about a native win32/OS2/BEOS port of
> PostgreSQL.
>
> During the last months i've ported PostgreSQL over to Novell NetWare
> and i've
> changed the code that I use pthreads instead of fork() now.
>
> I had a lot of work with the variables and cleanup but mayor parts
are
> done.
>
> I would appreciate if we could combine this work.

Very nice... I have patches for QNX6 which also involved redoing
shared
memory and sempahores stuff. It would make very good sense to
intergate,
especially since you managed to do something very close to what I
wanted :)

> My plan was to finish this port, discuss the port with other people
and
> offer all the work
> to the PostgreSQL source tree, but now i'm jumping in here because
of
> all the discussions.
>
> What i've done in detail:
> - i've defined #USE_PTHREADS in pg_config.h to differentiate between
> the forked and the
> threaded backend.
> - I've added several parts in postmaster.c so all functions are
based
> on pthreads now.
> - I've changed the signal handling because signals are process based

Careful here. On certain systems (on many, I suspect) POSIX semantics
for
signals is NOT default. Enforcing POSIX semantics requires certain
compile
time switches which will also change behavior of various functions.

> - I've changed code in ipc.c to have a clean shutdown of threads
> - I've written some functions to switch the global variables. The
> globals are controled with
> POSIX semaphores.
> - I've written a new implementation of shared memory and semaphores-
> With pthreads I don't
> need real shared memory any more and i'm using POSIX semaphores now

POSIX semaphores for what? I assume by the conext that you're talking
about
replacing SysV semaphores which are used to control access to shared
memory.
If that is the case, POSIX semaphores are not the best choice really.
POSIX
mutexes would be okay, but on SMP systems spinlocks (hardware TAS
based
macros or POSIX spinlocks) would probably be better anyway. Note that
on
most platforms spinlocks are used for that  and SysV semaphores were
just a
'last resort' which had unacceptable performance and so I guess it was
not
used at all.

Do you have your patch somewhere online?

-- igor



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