[DebianGIS-dev] Postgis Postgresql issues

[F.Sluiter]

Hi All,

I did have a short time to look at the new package Alex prepared.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it is not using the correct
set-up for postgresql, you have to use postgresql-common for this to
work.

Martin Pitt designed a new setup, that will enable running several
versions of postgresql at the same time. If people don't want that, it
works as before...
A description of what this is about is here:
http://people.debian.org/~mpitt/postgresql-ng.html

The new package that implements this is postgresql-common. It is vital
to postgis to conform to this structure!
It does solve a whole lot of dependencies in a rather elegant way.
Currently I have two cluster versions running with several databases
and it is flawless, allthough not completely userfriendly yet. Both
versions use postgis (one postgis0.9, the other uses postgis1.0.3).

The Gist is this:
All applications for postgresql are wrapped with a script that checks
where to send the command and each user has a default version.
If you only have one version (postgresql 8.0), everything is fine,
everybody just types psql and it works.
Now if you have two versions (I have postgresql 7.4 at port 5432 and
postgresql 8.0 at port 5433) it works like this:
$ pg_lsclusters
Version Cluster   Port   Status Owner    Data directory
7.4         main      5432 online postgres /var/lib/postgresql/7.4/main
8.0     main      5433 online postgres /var/lib/postgresql/8.0/main

$psql -f dowhatever.sql (connects to my default version 7.4)
$psql --cluster 8.0/myclustername -f dowhatever.sql

He has developped several tools to control all this (pg_ctlcluster is
the main script).

For postgis this would mean:

Versioning for packages:
I suggest a new naming convention:
postgresql-postgis-7.5
postgresql-postgis-8.0
postgresql-postgis-8.1

Package versions will follow postgis versions so the version of all the
above packages will be currently 1.0.x.
Allthough it looks like you suddenly maintain 3 packages, the set-up of
postgresql-common is such that this will be minimal effort.

For the loader and drivers I suggest following the setup of
postgresql-common: each binary will find its place in the bin directory of
the appropriate postgresql version.
calling shp2pgsql will invoke a wrapper script that checks which cluster
version you use as default, or if you want to connect to another. You
can use the scripts Martin wrote as a base for this.

About your Errors:
What could be the case is that your install doesn't allways follow the correct
path to the new postgresql 8.0 (and partially uses libs from 7.4)

Regards,

Floris