Re: 8.4 release planning - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 11:44 AM, Jonah H. Harris
<jonah.harris@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 11:33 AM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>>
>> > That would depend on timing then.  Trying to get people to upgrade to
>> > 8.4 is
>> > going to be difficult if they're waiting on Hot Standby, which means
>> > less
>> > in-the-field testing of the 8.4 code base until the 8.5 release.
>>
>> [ deja vu... ]  Just like no one was going to bother upgrading to 8.3
>> because what they wanted wouldn't be there till 8.4, and the similar
>> claims we heard about 8.2 and 8.1 before that ...
>
> I'm not trying to be an alarmist, I'm just stating what I saw when I was @
> EDB.  Customers, especially those with large databases or small admin teams,
> would definitely wait for features before upgrading.  Some people waited
> specifically for HOT or features that would benefit them specifically.  My
> only gripe with a small window between 8.4 and 8.5 was just that I believe
> people would be more likely to wait until 8.5 rather than upgrading twice in
> the same year.  Though, as I generally like people to be using the latest
> version of PG, I'd certainly be happy to be wrong on this.

We've got folks working on the upgrade to 8.3; 8.4 isn't on our radar
yet, particularly in view of the fact that it's getting pretty
nebulous when 8.4 will be production-worthy :-).

It would surprise me not at all if we never got around to an 8.4
deployment, irrespective of whether we hold off another 6 months to
get more of hot standby into it or not.

Based on that metric, I suppose I ought to prefer for us to get 8.4
out the door more quickly, and start seeing work progress on the 8.5
backlog, which would presumably include the two large O/S patches
(e.g. - hot standby, SE-PG).

I suppose there are two, possibly 3 directions to consider, with
respective merits and demerits:

1.  Suppose we cut things off now, and say "push that stuff to 8.5"...

- Simon and KaiGai will be justifiably angry since they *have* been
doing the right kinds of things, and were expecting to see their
material in 8.4.

- On the other hand, their work would be among the first considered
for 8.5, so that they'd not be behind the way they were for 8.4.

- We *won't* irritate the somewhat numerous set of people with patches
already awaiting
8.5,<http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/CommitFest_2009-First> and allow
those patches to "bit rot" in the interim.

2.  Alternatively, we may press on...

- We may put off 8.4 for an extra 4-6 months.

- Everyone loses the utility of the features already committed in 8.4
for that extra period of time.

- We irritate everyone that was accepting that their contributions
would be waiting until the first 8.5 commitfest.

3.  There's always the possibility of a "worst of all worlds."

- All the irritations and losses of #2

- For whatever reason, we don't get usable hot standby / SEPostgreSQL
at the end of it.

I'm getting increasingly scared of #2 and #3.

From a purely selfish perspective, neither of these features are ones
I was expecting to be using in the short or medium term (I don't
actually see a use case for SELinux, myself).  I'll note that as my
bias, but I don't think that invalidates the analysis of the 3
directions.
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