Pursuant to Theodore Petrosky's recent trouble report, I thought I would
see what happens if you try to build Postgres in a directory whose path
contains spaces, or if the install prefix contains spaces.

It doesn't work, not even close.

It looks to me like there are a couple of hundred places in the
Makefiles that would need to be fixed by adding quotes around various
references to $(libdir) and related variables. I'm afraid that VPATH
builds with spaces in the path to the original source tree are not
realistically fixable at all; certainly prep_buildtree cannot easily be
fixed (it misparses the output of "find") and it looks like we'd need
upstream Autoconf changes as well to get configure to work fully in that
scenario.

I don't think it's appropriate to try to fix this at RC3 stage,
seeing that it's not a regression --- this never worked before either.
But maybe we should add it to the TODO list to consider working on
someday.

regards, tom lane

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Tom Lane wrote:

>Pursuant to Theodore Petrosky's recent trouble report, I thought I would
>see what happens if you try to build Postgres in a directory whose path
>contains spaces, or if the install prefix contains spaces.
>
>It doesn't work, not even close.
>
>It looks to me like there are a couple of hundred places in the
>Makefiles that would need to be fixed by adding quotes around various
>references to $(libdir) and related variables. I'm afraid that VPATH
>builds with spaces in the path to the original source tree are not
>realistically fixable at all; certainly prep_buildtree cannot easily be
>fixed (it misparses the output of "find") and it looks like we'd need
>upstream Autoconf changes as well to get configure to work fully in that
>scenario.
>
>I don't think it's appropriate to try to fix this at RC3 stage,
>seeing that it's not a regression --- this never worked before either.
>But maybe we should add it to the TODO list to consider working on
>someday.
>
>
>
>

I've just reluctantly managed to convince myself that it's worth a TODO.
In 99% of cases it's a matter of "don't do that". If we didn't have
relocatable installs it would matter a lot. Maybe for now it's worth
checking for and causing an error at the configure stage. That would be
nicer than some arbitrary failure later in the process.

cheers

andrew

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On Friday 31 December 2004 20:03, Andrew Dunstan wrote:
> Tom Lane wrote:
> >Pursuant to Theodore Petrosky's recent trouble report, I thought I would
> >see what happens if you try to build Postgres in a directory whose path
> >contains spaces, or if the install prefix contains spaces.
> >
> >It doesn't work, not even close.
<snip>
> >
> >I don't think it's appropriate to try to fix this at RC3 stage,
> >seeing that it's not a regression --- this never worked before either.
> >But maybe we should add it to the TODO list to consider working on
> >someday.
>
> I've just reluctantly managed to convince myself that it's worth a TODO.
> In 99% of cases it's a matter of "don't do that". If we didn't have
> relocatable installs it would matter a lot. Maybe for now it's worth
> checking for and causing an error at the configure stage. That would be
> nicer than some arbitrary failure later in the process.
>

Along similar lines, when I installed RC1 on a windows box it installed it
under the "program files" directory. Now, this was fine for most cases, but
when I had to use some of the command line tools it was really crappy trying
to write explicit directories under dos. I generally chalk that up to windows
being a crappy os to work with from the command line, but I wonder if the
installer ought to be more suggestive to use something like c:\postgresql\ or
at least warn user not to install in directories with spaces.

--
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter Lamp :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL

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Robert Treat wrote:

>
>Along similar lines, when I installed RC1 on a windows box it installed it
>under the "program files" directory. Now, this was fine for most cases, but
>when I had to use some of the command line tools it was really crappy trying
>to write explicit directories under dos. I generally chalk that up to windows
>being a crappy os to work with from the command line, but I wonder if the
>installer ought to be more suggestive to use something like c:\postgresql\ or
>at least warn user not to install in directories with spaces.
>
>

Well, that's not really along similar lines, except that it also
concerns the issue of spaces in directories.

Actually, the standard Windows place to put software is Program Files,
and programs that don't do that are considered somewhat impolite. The
short answer really is "put the directories in your path". Windows users
generally understand this quite well. Maybe the installer should offer
to add the location to the System path or the user's path (assuming it
doesn't already).

cheers

andrew

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> Actually, the standard Windows place to put software is Program Files,

Actually,. it's not... it's %ProgramFiles% or
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Pro gramFilesDir since the
name of "C:\Program Files" may vary depending on the language of the OS.

> and programs that don't do that are considered somewhat impolite.

Impolite is a bit of an understatement IMO.

just my $0.02 worth,

john


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Added to TODO:

* Allow building with directories containing spaces

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Andrew Dunstan wrote:
>
>
> Tom Lane wrote:
>
> >Pursuant to Theodore Petrosky's recent trouble report, I thought I would
> >see what happens if you try to build Postgres in a directory whose path
> >contains spaces, or if the install prefix contains spaces.
> >
> >It doesn't work, not even close.
> >
> >It looks to me like there are a couple of hundred places in the
> >Makefiles that would need to be fixed by adding quotes around various
> >references to $(libdir) and related variables. I'm afraid that VPATH
> >builds with spaces in the path to the original source tree are not
> >realistically fixable at all; certainly prep_buildtree cannot easily be
> >fixed (it misparses the output of "find") and it looks like we'd need
> >upstream Autoconf changes as well to get configure to work fully in that
> >scenario.
> >
> >I don't think it's appropriate to try to fix this at RC3 stage,
> >seeing that it's not a regression --- this never worked before either.
> >But maybe we should add it to the TODO list to consider working on
> >someday.
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
> I've just reluctantly managed to convince myself that it's worth a TODO.
> In 99% of cases it's a matter of "don't do that". If we didn't have
> relocatable installs it would matter a lot. Maybe for now it's worth
> checking for and causing an error at the configure stage. That would be
> nicer than some arbitrary failure later in the process.
>
> cheers
>
> andrew
>
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>

--
Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us
pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001
+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road
+ Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

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Tom Lane wrote:
> Pursuant to Theodore Petrosky's recent trouble report, I thought I
> would see what happens if you try to build Postgres in a directory
> whose path contains spaces,

The last I heard in the autotools community on this issue was "forget
it". Not that that means it's impossible, but you're going to fight a
hard battle with make, which has no quoting mechanism at all.

> or if the install prefix contains spaces.

This should be achievable, with a few thousand quotes in the right
places.

--
Peter Eisentraut
http://developer.postgresql.org/~petere/

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Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> Tom Lane wrote:
> > Pursuant to Theodore Petrosky's recent trouble report, I thought I
> > would see what happens if you try to build Postgres in a directory
> > whose path contains spaces,
>
> The last I heard in the autotools community on this issue was "forget
> it". Not that that means it's impossible, but you're going to fight a
> hard battle with make, which has no quoting mechanism at all.
>
> > or if the install prefix contains spaces.
>
> This should be achievable, with a few thousand quotes in the right
> places.

Interesting. TODO updated:

* Allow building with directories containing spaces

There are two capabilities here, first the ability to build from a
source directory that contains spaces, and second the ability to install
into a directory that contains spaces. The first is probably not
possible because 'gmake' and other compiler tools do not fully support
spaces in path names. The second is possible with proper quoting in
the makefiles. Because PostgreSQL supports relocatable installs, it
is possible to install into a directory that doesn't contain spaces and
then copy the install to a directory with spaces.

--
Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us
pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001
+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road
+ Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

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