Re: Collation version tracking for macOS

On Tue, Dec 6, 2022 at 6:45 AM Joe Conway <mail@joeconway.com> wrote:
> On 12/5/22 12:41, Jeff Davis wrote:
> > On Mon, 2022-12-05 at 16:12 +1300, Thomas Munro wrote:
> >> 1.  I think we should seriously consider provider = ICU63.  I still
> >> think search-by-collversion is a little too magical, even though it
> >> clearly can be made to work.  Of the non-magical systems, I think
> >> encoding the choice of library into the provider name would avoid the
> >> need to add a second confusing "X_version" concept alongside our
> >> existing "X_version" columns in catalogues and DDL syntax, while
> >> still
> >> making it super clear what is going on.
> >
> > As I understand it, this is #2 in your previous list?
> >
> > Can we put the naming of the provider into the hands of the user, e.g.:
> >
> >    CREATE COLLATION PROVIDER icu63 TYPE icu
> >      AS '/path/to/libicui18n.so.63', '/path/to/libicuuc.so.63';
> >
> > In this model, icu would be a "provider kind" and icu63 would be the
> > specific provider, which is named by the user.
> >
> > That seems like the least magical approach, to me. We need an ICU
> > library; the administrator gives us one that looks like ICU; and we're
> > happy.
>
> +1
>
> I like this. The provider kind defines which path we take in our code,
> and the specific library unambiguously defines a specific collation
> behavior (I think, ignoring bugs?)

OK, I'm going to see what happens if I try to wrangle that stuff into
a new catalogue table.