sqlite file format, anyone?

[Linas Vepstas]

On Mon, Jun 23, 2003 at 06:21:43PM -0400, Christopher Browne was heard to remark:
> > Postgres doesn't have an embedded server.  For casual home users I
> 
> It seems no more reasonable to expect that casual home users have to:
>  - Run mke2fs, or whatever else is involved in setting up filesystems;
>  - Run whatever frightening incantations are involved in getting X
>    working.

Bad examples, recent installs of suse/redhat seem to hide this kind of gore.

> mkdir("~/GnuCash/DB");
> system("initdb -d ~/GnuCash/DB");
> [dribble a few changes into ~/GnuCash/DB/{pg_hba|postgres}.conf,
>    notably turning on TCP/IP, picking a port #, probably not too 
>    much else...]
> system("pg_ctl -D ~/GnuCash/DB start");

Someone needs to write & maintain the code to do this.  There's 
some tricky shell scripting & the like that's needed to get this to work,
and it has to work on all distro's.  People who like to write C code
hate to write shell scripts, in general; different mind-set. 

Add to this that postgress has been churning a bit recently. 
Every other time I install, it wants me to do some kind db administration
to save tables that I am frankly too lazy to bother with.    
I suspect that things like pg_hba.conf keep changing from release to release.

All of this is solvable.  But its potentially hard to maintain.
The major linux distros could solve this, if they set thier mind to it.
But they won't do this for gnucash only, there would have to be others
asking for this.  And the postgres guys are pursuing server space,
not desktop apps.   

So point taken, we could use postgres on the desktop, but I don't beleive
that postgres is ready for the desktop.  Just look at the DLL hell 
that gnucash has been accused of.  Last thing I need is SQL hell.

--linas
   

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