On Mon, May 07, 2007 at 11:56:14PM -0400, Greg Smith wrote: > Debian packages PostgreSQL in a fashion unique to it; it's arguable > whether it's better or not (I don't like it), but going with that will > assure your installation is a bit non-standard compared with most Linux > installas. The main reasons you'd pick Debian are either that you like > that scheme (which tries to provide some structure to running multiple > clusters on one box), or that you plan to rely heavily on community > packages that don't come with the Redhat distributions and therefore would > appreciate how easy it is to use apt-get against the large Debian software > repository. Just to add to this: As far as I understand it, this scheme was originally mainly put in place to allow multiple _versions_ of Postgres to be installed alongside each other, for smoother upgrades. (There's a command that does all the details of running first pg_dumpall for the users and groups, then the new pg_dump with -Fc to get all data and LOBs over, then some hand-fixing to change explicit paths to $libdir, etc...) Of course, you lose all that if you need a newer Postgres version than the OS provides. (Martin Pitt, the Debian/Ubuntu maintainer of Postgres -- the packaging in Debian and Ubuntu is the same, sans version differences -- makes his own backported packages of the newest Postgres to Debian stable; it's up to you if you'd trust that or not.) /* Steinar */ -- Homepage: http://www.sesse.net/
