On 10.04.25 01:08, Jacob Champion wrote:
Christoph noted that this was also confusing from the packaging side,
earlier, and Daniel proposed -Doauth-client/--with-oauth-client as the
feature switch name instead. Any objections? Unfortunately it would
mean a buildfarm email is in order, so we should get it locked in.

We had that discussion early in the development, and I still think it's not the right choice.

The general idea, at least on the Autoconf side, is that --with-FOO means enable all the features that require library FOO. For example, --with-ldap enables all the LDAP-related features, including authentication support in libpq, authentication support in the server, and service lookup in libpq. --with-[open]ssl enables all the features that use OpenSSL, including SSL support in the client and server but also encryption support in pgcrypto.

The naming system you propose has problems:

First, what if we add another kind of "oauth-client" that doesn't use libcurl, how would you extend the set of options?

Second, what if we add some kind of oauth plugin for the server that uses libcurl, how would you extend the set of options?

If you used that system for options in the ldap or openssl cases, you'd end up with maybe six options (and packagers would forget to turn on half of them). But worse, what you are hiding is the information what dependencies you are pulling in, which is the actual reason for the options. (If there was no external dependency, there would be no option at all.)

This seems unnecessarily complicated and inconsistent. Once you have made the choice of taking the libcurl dependency, why not build everything that requires it?

(Nitpick: If you go with this kind of option, it should be --enable-XXX on the Autoconf side.)



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