PostgreSQL Development tool for Emacs

I'm a PostgreSQL Contributor, and an Emacs user. When developing PostgreSQL I tend to do lots of repetitive tasks. So much so that I want to automate them.

This facility allows you to have shortcuts to easily use your own PostgreSQL environments when working on the source code. It will define the PGPORT, PGDATA and PATH for you, and also CC while at it, in a newly opened M-x shell session. It's made to easily manage a separate M-x shell session per branch you're working on.

The main interest is that this tool will then bind some keys to type in repeatitive stanzas automatically so that you don't have to, including getting the current backend pid and opening a parallel gdb session attached to it.

pgdevenv

The pgdevenv feature aims at providing shortcuts to use in a M-x shell session in order to help hacking PostgreSQL source code. It takes care of the most frequent commands you're going to be using.

Usage

Main shortcut:

C-c - n     pgdev-open-shell

Extra shortcuts available from the special shell:

C-c - g		pgdev-insert-git-clone
C-c - c		pgdev-insert-configure
C-c - f		pgdev-edit-config
C-c - s		pgdev-insert-pgctl-start
C-c - S		pgdev-insert-pgctl-stop
C-c - r     pgdev-install-and-restart
C-c - R		pgdev-reinitdb
C-c - m		pgdev-make
C-c - M		pgdev-maintainer-clean-rebuild
C-c - d		pgdev-debug-this-psql
C-c - D		pgdev-debug

Setup

The main thing you want to review adapt are those couple of custom variables:

(defcustom pgdev-clone-root "~/dev/PostgreSQL"
  "Top directory where to `git clone` the PostgreSQL development branches"
  :group 'pgdev)

(defcustom pgdev-install-root "~/pgsql"
  "Top directory where to `make install` the PostgreSQL development branches"
  :group 'pgdev)

(defcustom pgdev-my-git-url "https://github.com/dimitri/postgres.git"
  "URL of the your own repository"
  :group 'pgdev)

(defcustom pgdev-pg-git-url "git://git.postgresql.org/git/postgresql.git"
  "URL of the PostgreSQL upstream repository (or your mirror of it)"
  :group 'pgdev)

(defcustom pgdev-pg-branches
  '(("9.2" "pg9.2" "REL9_2_STABLE" "54392")
    ("9.1" "pg9.1" "REL9_1_STABLE" "54391")
    ("9.0" "pg9.0" "REL9_0_STABLE" "54390")
    ("8.4" "pg8.4" "REL8_4_STABLE" "54384")
    ("8.3" "pg8.3" "REL8_3_STABLE" "54383"))
  "NAME DIRECTORY TAG PORT"
  :group 'pgdev)

(defcustom pgdev-my-branches
      '(("ddl" "postgres" "master" "54393"))
  "Deveopper owned branches"
  :group 'pgdev)

(defcustom pgdev-make-extra-options "-j 4"
  "Extra options to give make for"
  :group 'pgdev)

(defcustom pgdev-configure-option-list
  '("--enable-cassert"
    "--enable-debug"
    "--enable-depend"
    "--with-perl"
    "--with-python"
    "--with-tcl")
  "PostgreSQL ./configure options, --prefix is automatically prepended"
  :group 'pgdev)

As you can see the facility targets PostgreSQL developpers having their own private fork where they develop features in so called git feature branches, and also want to be able to occasionnaly work on a stable branch, while fixing a bug typically.

You might be also interrested into changing those:

(defcustom pgdev-my-git-url "https://github.com/dimitri/postgres.git"
  "URL of the your own repository"
  :group 'pgdev)

(defcustom pgdev-pg-git-url "git://git.postgresql.org/git/postgresql.git"
  "URL of the PostgreSQL upstream repository (or your mirror of it)"
  :group 'pgdev)

As you can see the default pgdev-my-git-url setting might not work for you...

Clones

I didn't yet try to do something really smart about multiple cloning here. I know I want separate branches in separate directories when it's time to prepare a patch to fix a bug, and I've heard that using git it's possible to have a kind of a master shallow clone to rule them all. I guess doing some manual steps and then pointing pgdev-my-git-url to a local git repository would do it though.

If you want to have a try and tell me how it works for you, be my guest.

Hope you enjoy! (Yes I know the audience is not huge.)

pgsql-minor-mode

That's a minor mode offering support for some advanced SQL editing options:

C-M-a       pgsql-beginning-of-query
C-M-e       pgsql-end-of-query
C-M-h       pgsql-mark-query
C-M-x       pgsql-eval-query

Equiped with that you can rejoice and use those shortcuts that work so well in other programming modes, particulary the lisp based ones.

The evaluation of a query works by sending the query text to a buffer in which the psql interactive command is running, typically a M-x shell session prepared with the previous tools: pgdevenv.

The C-M-x shortcut when used for the first time in a SQL buffer will ask you which buffer to send the query in, providing you with pgdevenv environments auto completion.

dimitri / pgdevenv-el