On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 5:48 PM, Dave Page <dpage@pgadmin.org> wrote:
> I would. PostgreSQL is not a commercial application which has to be
> released on schedule to satisfy shareholders - it's an Open Source
> project that aims to provide it's users with useful features.
It has nothing to do with commercial/non commercial. It's basically a
decision of time based releases vs features based releases.
For many years now, new versions of PostgreSQL have been released on a
time based schedule (one version/year in december) even if it was not
a strong decision.
> We have
> two extremely useful features here (hot standby and sync replication)
> which together will make this a killer release for many people - we
> can delay a month or two as required to polish and get them ready for
> release, or decide we're willing to wait another 12 - 14 months for
> them to be available for end users.
IMHO, if it takes 4 months to have these patches in the tree, it's not
worth it: do we accept other patches during this period or not? If so,
on which basis, if not how are we going to deal with 3-4 months of
patches waiting for review.
Note that delaying 8.4 is also delaying the other features of 8.4
which are ready (new FSM, CTE, Windowing functions). Personnaly,
integrated replication is by far the most expected feature but I'm not
sure it's the case for everyone, especially if they have to wait 3-4
more months.
It's really a matter of how far we are of having these patches in
their final form (and I mean after reviewing). And as Tom stated, it's
currently hard to know.
IMHO, Simon's proposal to identify which parts especially needs
attention is a very good idea. I really think these patches need a
thorough review sooner than later: we won't make it happen by letting
Simon write code alone without feedback.
After this first review, we should be able to know if it's a matter of
1 month or 3. Without knowing this, it's hard to take a good decision.
--
Guillaume
