Re: EOL for 7.4? - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

On Tue, 2009-11-03 at 15:01 -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
> Simon Riggs <simon@2ndQuadrant.com> writes:
> > On Tue, 2009-11-03 at 12:29 -0500, Robert Haas wrote:
> >> You're
> >> not going to take all those little dribs and drabs of responsibility
> >> and transfer them to one person, or even one group of people.
> 
> > With respect to all the people you just mentioned, I don't see any
> > reason why other people could not perform the duties you describe. Of
> > course, it might require a little effort, as we might expect of any
> > handover of responsibility.
> 
> It's not "handover of responsibility" that's the issue, it's that
> dividing up existing responsibility entails more communication and
> synchronization overhead.  If we have a separate set of people
> back-patching and releasing old branches, then every time we make a bug
> fix, we have to explain the patch to them; every time we have a release,
> we have to get their concurrence on release schedule.  And we have to
> track whether patches that should be back-patched have been.  The added
> overhead of all that would easily exceed the time savings of pushing off
> the responsibility, IMO.

This is essentially the "delegation isn't worth it" argument. Which
doesn't really wash because there clearly is delegation already. There
was also a time when those people started and needed to work things
out. 

I'd hold my hand up and say I love to do things myself rather than
delegate, but I won't be arguing that makes sense ahead of knowing: if
there is a delegatee at all, how they would want to operate, who they
are and what they know.

> (As an example, it's already been determined among core and -packagers
> that there will be no 8.4.2 during November, because we can't get
> everyone's time to make a release this month.  Putting even more
> people in the loop does NOT make that better.  And they can't be
> out of the loop --- for instance, if it's a security update, 7.4.x
> had better come out at the same time as the other branches.)

You're also presupposing that we would need to synchronize things in the
way you say. It seems strange to be in a position where we either
release everything in lock-step, or just jettison it completely. So we
can have everything or nothing.

All I'm saying is that some people may be willing to live with something
rather than nothing. I might be wrong and nobody gives a damn, but as a
project I feel we should at least check to see whether people care
enough to act. Or maybe do it for the experience. Who knows without
asking?

-- Simon Riggs           www.2ndQuadrant.com