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postgres/doc/src/sgml/sourcerepo.sgml
Peter Eisentraut 721856ff24 Remove distprep
A PostgreSQL release tarball contains a number of prebuilt files, in
particular files produced by bison, flex, perl, and well as html and
man documentation.  We have done this consistent with established
practice at the time to not require these tools for building from a
tarball.  Some of these tools were hard to get, or get the right
version of, from time to time, and shipping the prebuilt output was a
convenience to users.

Now this has at least two problems:

One, we have to make the build system(s) work in two modes: Building
from a git checkout and building from a tarball.  This is pretty
complicated, but it works so far for autoconf/make.  It does not
currently work for meson; you can currently only build with meson from
a git checkout.  Making meson builds work from a tarball seems very
difficult or impossible.  One particular problem is that since meson
requires a separate build directory, we cannot make the build update
files like gram.h in the source tree.  So if you were to build from a
tarball and update gram.y, you will have a gram.h in the source tree
and one in the build tree, but the way things work is that the
compiler will always use the one in the source tree.  So you cannot,
for example, make any gram.y changes when building from a tarball.
This seems impossible to fix in a non-horrible way.

Second, there is increased interest nowadays in precisely tracking the
origin of software.  We can reasonably track contributions into the
git tree, and users can reasonably track the path from a tarball to
packages and downloads and installs.  But what happens between the git
tree and the tarball is obscure and in some cases non-reproducible.

The solution for both of these issues is to get rid of the step that
adds prebuilt files to the tarball.  The tarball now only contains
what is in the git tree (*).  Getting the additional build
dependencies is no longer a problem nowadays, and the complications to
keep these dual build modes working are significant.  And of course we
want to get the meson build system working universally.

This commit removes the make distprep target altogether.  The make
dist target continues to do its job, it just doesn't call distprep
anymore.

(*) - The tarball also contains the INSTALL file that is built at make
dist time, but not by distprep.  This is unchanged for now.

The make maintainer-clean target, whose job it is to remove the
prebuilt files in addition to what make distclean does, is now just an
alias to make distprep.  (In practice, it is probably obsolete given
that git clean is available.)

The following programs are now hard build requirements in configure
(they were already required by meson.build):

- bison
- flex
- perl

Reviewed-by: Michael Paquier <michael@paquier.xyz>
Reviewed-by: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>
Discussion: https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/e07408d9-e5f2-d9fd-5672-f53354e9305e@eisentraut.org
2023-11-06 15:18:04 +01:00

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<!-- doc/src/sgml/sourcerepo.sgml -->
<appendix id="sourcerepo">
<title>The Source Code Repository</title>
<para>
The <productname>PostgreSQL</productname> source code is stored and managed
using the <productname>Git</productname> version control system. A public
mirror of the master repository is available; it is updated within a minute
of any change to the master repository.
</para>
<para>
Our wiki, <ulink
url="https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Working_with_Git"></ulink>,
has some discussion on working with Git.
</para>
<sect1 id="git">
<title>Getting the Source via <productname>Git</productname></title>
<para>
With <productname>Git</productname> you will make a copy of the entire code repository
on your local machine, so you will have access to all history and branches
offline. This is the fastest and most flexible way to develop or test
patches.
</para>
<procedure>
<title>Git</title>
<step>
<para>
You will need an installed version of <productname>Git</productname>, which you can
get from <ulink url="https://git-scm.com"></ulink>. Many systems already
have a recent version of <application>Git</application> installed by default, or
available in their package distribution system.
</para>
</step>
<step>
<para>
To begin using the Git repository, make a clone of the official mirror:
<programlisting>
git clone https://git.postgresql.org/git/postgresql.git
</programlisting>
This will copy the full repository to your local machine, so it may take
a while to complete, especially if you have a slow Internet connection.
The files will be placed in a new subdirectory <filename>postgresql</filename> of
your current directory.
</para>
<para>
The Git mirror can also be reached via the Git protocol. Just change the URL
prefix to <literal>git</literal>, as in:
<programlisting>
git clone git://git.postgresql.org/git/postgresql.git
</programlisting>
</para>
</step>
<step>
<para>
Whenever you want to get the latest updates in the system, <command>cd</command>
into the repository, and run:
<programlisting>
git fetch
</programlisting>
</para>
</step>
</procedure>
<para>
<productname>Git</productname> can do a lot more things than just fetch the source. For
more information, consult the <productname>Git</productname> man pages, or see the
website at <ulink url="https://git-scm.com"></ulink>.
</para>
</sect1>
</appendix>