future of contrib/xml2 and xslt processing

Peter Eisentraut <peter.eisentraut@2ndquadrant.com> writes:

contrib/xml2 has been claimed to be deprecated since PostgreSQL 8.3. I
took a look through the functions it offers and perhaps with xmltable
now being available, they could all be replaced using built-in
functions, perhaps with some small tweaking.

But we don't have any replacement lined up for the XSLT processing
function xslt_process. What should we do with that, assuming that we
eventually want to remove contrib/xml2 altogether?

1. Just remove it, leaving users to find other solutions. (PL/P* can
probably fill the gap.)

2. Create a new extension contrib/xslt, move the implementation there.
(Optionally, have contrib/xml2 depend on this new extension if it is not
ready to be removed.)

3. Add XSLT functionality to core (unlikely).

Option 2 seems like useless churn; we'd still have the same
not-very-high-quality code, just moved around.

I agree that moving the libxslt dependency into core isn't real
attractive either.

I suspect that the realistic alternatives are either option 1
or option 0: do nothing.

regards, tom lane

Hi,

On 2018-05-22 14:38:32 -0400, Peter Eisentraut wrote:

1. Just remove it, leaving users to find other solutions. (PL/P* can
probably fill the gap.)

I don't have access to the code anymore, but a good number of past
customers and employers of mine relied on xslt. I think we'd get some
pushback for this.

Greetings,

Andres Freund