[csw-maintainers] Building postgresql-8.4.1

[Maciej (Matchek) Blizinski]

On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 9:51 AM, Dagobert Michelsen <dam at opencsw.org> wrote:
> BTW: Make sure to read files/README-CSW.txt. It is stated in there
> that the databases for 32 and 64 bit are not compatible, so I am pretty
> sure you don't want isaexec anywhere in the package, but want to
> select 32/64 explicitly as also stated in the README.

I understand the incompatibility.  I don't understand why would it
matter.  Machine's architecture doesn't change after installation.  If
it's 64-bit, it's always been and always will be, until the machine is
retired.

There might be a problem when someone has been running 32-bit binaries
on a 64-bit machine and now switches to the 64-bit enabled PostgreSQL.
 In such a they should downgrade their package back to the 32-bit and
do the dump/restore dance.  However, if they upgrade from 8.3 to 8.4
(which is the case here), they will have to do this anyway.  I also
think that the PGCTL explicit setting is a non-solution.  It makes
people run 32-bit binaries on 64-bit machines by default, which wastes
the migration effort: they could've migrated from 32-bit 8.3 to 64-bit
8.4, but they only migrated from 32-bit 8.3 to 32-bit 8.4.  I assert
that using isaexec in 8.4 is no worse than using explicit architecture
setting in 8.4.

Thoughts?

Maciej