When creating an extension upgrade sql script, because the function does not have the same parameter names and/or parameters type and/or the result types changes, there is the need to drop the function because otherwise the CREATE OR REPLACE of the new signature will fail.
So for example:
having the following function:
SELECT proallargtypes, proargmodes, proargnames FROM pg_proc WHERE proallargtypes = '{25,20,20,16,23,23,20,20}' AND proname = 'pgr_edgedisjointpaths'; -[ RECORD 1 ]--+----------------------------------------------------------------------------- proallargtypes | {25,20,20,16,23,23,20,20} proargmodes | {i,i,i,i,o,o,o,o} proargnames | {"","","",directed,seq,path_seq,node,edge}
When adding extra OUT parameters, because the result types (&names) change, the function needs a DROP:
-- Row type defined by OUT parameters is different
ALTER EXTENSION pgrouting DROP FUNCTION pgr_edgedisjointpaths(text,bigint,bigint,boolean);
DROP FUNCTION IF EXISTS pgr_edgedisjointpaths(text,bigint,bigint,boolean);
but doing that, objects that depend on the function. like a view, get dropped when using CASCADE in the ALTER extension, and functions that use the pgr_edgedisjointpaths internally don't get dropped.
So, I must say that I experimented: instead of doing the drop, I made: