[development] Do not let postgresql hold back great patches

[Larry Garfield]

On Friday 16 November 2007, Khalid Baheyeldin wrote:

> I think we are going in circles here.
>
> His very point is that HE IS NOT ADVOCATING that Drupal become a MySQL only
> monoculture. Some thought it to be so, but it is not. Nor do I believe that
> anyone supports that for that matter.
>
> His point, that the lack of resources behind PostgreSQL is delaying the
> acceptance of patches that work in MySQL, thus holding Drupal back.
>
> I believe I covered this point in my previous two emails. Let those who use
> PostgreSQL put the effort of testing the patches, not hold everything back.

I expect this issue to become much bigger come Drupal 7.  There's talk of 
getting MS SQL support in core (courtesy Microsoft), Oracle in core, SQLite 
in core... Even if we can support all of those different databases at the 
same time, maintaining support for them is going to be a huge pain.  99% of 
people reviewing patches are using MySQL.  Will we say that no patch with a 
query can be committed until one of the three people who uses Oracle with 
Drupal has tested it?  Will we not be able to commit a patch until Microsoft 
confirms it doesn't break MS SQL?  

Perhaps that's a bit hyperbolic, but since, for example, I am completely 
incapable of testing against MS SQL (I don't have a Windows computer capable 
of running it, even if I was willing to pay for it) and I suspect many other 
people are, this issue is going to crop up more and more, and we are going to 
need to figure out how we're going to address it.

-- 
Larry Garfield			AIM: LOLG42
larry at garfieldtech.com		ICQ: 6817012

"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of 
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which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to 
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of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it."  -- Thomas 
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