idea for 'module' support

Mark Hollomon <mhh@mindspring.com>

From: Mark Hollomon <mhh@mindspring.com>
To: pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Date: 1999-06-21T01:39:30Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers
As I've been playing with the PL/Perl implementation, it has dawned on me a
fairly simple, but nice feature could be added.

I would like to add the following command:

LOAD PACKAGE 'package-name';

Like the current 'LOAD' it would treat 'package-name'
as shared library. But it would also call an intialization function
in the library (package_init maybe?).

For instance, a user may type:

LOAD PACKAGE 'plperl';

This would not only load the shared library "plperl.so", but call
the function "package_init" which could the use the SPI facilities
to properly setup the system tables for the new language.

New types could be packaged the same way.

This would give a very modular way to add 'packages' of functionality.

What do you think?

-- 
Mark Hollomon
mhh@mindspring.com