Re: Let's drop two obsolete features which are bear-traps for novices

Andrew Dunstan <andrew(at)dunslane(dot)net> writes:
> On 11/02/2014 10:01 AM, Jaime Casanova wrote:
>> Not knowing how difficult it could be maybe a fair compromise is to
>> move MONEY datatype to a contrib. And documenting its limitations.

> That's pretty much dead in the water, I think. Builtin types and
> functions have Oid values in different ranges from non-builtin types
> such as those in contrib. It's one reason we have no chance of bringing
> hstore into core as people have previously asked for. And for the same
> reason I think moving a core type out to contrib won't work.

Well, the OID compatibility issue could be dodged by saying that we can't
do a pg_upgrade (in-place upgrade) of a database containing MONEY
columns. In fact, we might be able to just reject databases containing
MONEY[] (array) columns, which seems like it might be only a minor hazard.
Either way, requiring a dump/reload for upgrade is surely a better answer
for users of the type than just summarily screwing them.

> In any
> case, contrib shouldn't be a rubbish heap of old deprecated features.

There's a fair amount of contrib that was never anything else, so I don't
agree with that reasoning too much.

regards, tom lane