I would argue that if we delay 9.5 in order to do a 100% manual review of code, without adding any new automated tests or other non-manual tools for improving stability, then it's a waste of time; we might as well just release the beta, and our users will find more issues than we will. I am concerned that if we declare a cleanup period, especially in the middle of the summer, all that will happen is that the project will go to sleep for an extra three months.
Agreed. Cleanup can occur while we release code for public testing.
Many eyeballs of Beta beats anything we can throw at it thru manual inspection. The whole problem of bugs is that they are mostly found by people trying to use the software.
I will also point out that there is a major adoption cost to delaying 9.5. Right now users are excited about UPSERT, big data, and extra JSON features. If they have to wait another 7 months, they'll be a lot less excited, and we'll lose more potential users to the new databases and the MySQL forks.
Reliability of having a release every year is important as well as database reliability ... and for a lot of the new webdev generation, PostgreSQL is already the most reliable piece of software infrastructure they use. So if we're going to have a cleanup delay, then let's please make it an *intensive* cleanup delay, with specific goals, milestones, and a schedule. Otherwise, don't bother.
We've decided previously that having a fixed annual schedule was a good thing for the project. Getting the features that work into the hands of the people that want them is very important.
Discussing halting the development schedule publicly is very damaging.
If there are features in doubt, lets do more work on them or just pull them now and return to the schedule. I don't really care which ones get canned as long as we return to the schedule.
Whatever we do must be exact and measurable. If its not, it means we haven't assembled enough evidence for action that is sufficiently directed to achieve the desired goal.
Nothing being discussed here can/will slow down the BDR project since it is already a different thread of development. More so, 2ndQuadrant has zero income tied to the release of 9.5 or the commit of any feature, so as far as that company is concerned, the release could wait for 10 years.
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Simon Riggs http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/ PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Remote DBA, Training & Services
