On Thu, Jul 9, 2026 at 2:19 PM Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net> wrote: >> Freeze the parsing of old-style files; new features and changes go only in the new format. This should eliminate (well, almost eliminate) the maintenance burden associated with having two file formats. > > That's the scenario Tom warned against upthread.
But if, hypothetically, a new format were indeed a big improvement for people, it's probably what we should do.
I think the bar is going to be fairly high. And just jumping to a new format is going to create a world of pain for users. We'd need to carry the old format for a while as well, I think, and also provide some conversion tools.
I do agree that sometimes the formats can make expressiveness very clumsy. A recent example is the log_min_messages work.
