Re: PG 7.3 is five years old today

By chance I happened to notice in the release notes

Release 7.3
Release date: 2002-11-27

Man, it feels like a long time since that came out...

There has been some discussion of making a project policy of dropping
support for old releases after five years. Should we consider formally
instituting that?

I see that there are two or three minor bug fixes in the REL7_3_STABLE
branch since 7.3.20. Rather than just leaving those to rot, maybe the
actual policy should be "only one more update after 8.3 comes out".

Comments, opinions?

regards, tom lane

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On Tue, 27 Nov 2007 14:02:24 -0500
Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:

> By chance I happened to notice in the release notes
>
> Release 7.3
> Release date: 2002-11-27
>
> Man, it feels like a long time since that came out...

5 years was a long time ago :)

>
> There has been some discussion of making a project policy of dropping
> support for old releases after five years. Should we consider
> formally instituting that?

Yes.

>
> I see that there are two or three minor bug fixes in the REL7_3_STABLE
> branch since 7.3.20. Rather than just leaving those to rot, maybe the
> actual policy should be "only one more update after 8.3 comes out".
>
> Comments, opinions?

Release 7.3.21 with and EOL addendum :). E.g; this is the last release
of 7.3 and 7.3 is now considered unsupported.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

>
> regards, tom lane
>
> ---------------------------(end of
> broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 6: explain analyze is your
> friend
>

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On Tue, 2007-11-27 at 14:02 -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
> By chance I happened to notice in the release notes
>
> Release 7.3
> Release date: 2002-11-27
>
> Man, it feels like a long time since that came out...
>
> There has been some discussion of making a project policy of dropping
> support for old releases after five years. Should we consider formally
> instituting that?
>
> I see that there are two or three minor bug fixes in the REL7_3_STABLE
> branch since 7.3.20. Rather than just leaving those to rot, maybe the
> actual policy should be "only one more update after 8.3 comes out".
>
> Comments, opinions?

At some point back, I seem to recall the reason for bothering to
backpatch to 7.3 is that it had to be maintained for RedHat anyway, so
things might as well be backpatched? If that requirements is gone, I
think it's time to drop it.

And +1 on pushing out one final "end of the tree" release since there's
stuff there.

//Magnus

> At some point back, I seem to recall the reason for bothering
> to backpatch to 7.3 is that it had to be maintained for
> RedHat anyway, so things might as well be backpatched? If
> that requirements is gone, I think it's time to drop it.

+1

> And +1 on pushing out one final "end of the tree" release
> since there's stuff there.
>

+1

On Tue, 2007-11-27 at 14:02 -0500, Tom Lane wrote:

> There has been some discussion of making a project policy of dropping
> support for old releases after five years. Should we consider formally
> instituting that?
>
> I see that there are two or three minor bug fixes in the REL7_3_STABLE
> branch since 7.3.20. Rather than just leaving those to rot, maybe the
> actual policy should be "only one more update after 8.3 comes out".

Well, I agree that it shouldn't be your responsibility to do that. We
need to reduce the things you have to worry about to allow you to focus
on later releases.

One of the good things about open source is the ability for software to
remain supported for many years longer than closed source software.

Perhaps we should ask for volunteers to maintain that branch? If we had
a maintenance release manager, then they can take responsibility for
passing down any appropriate bug fixes. We could also create a new list
for people discussing older releases, so we don't get pinged all the
time.

That way anybody with an application at older release levels can either
step up to the plate or lose support.

--
Simon Riggs
2ndQuadrant http://www.2ndQuadrant.com

On Tue, 27 Nov 2007 11:08:58 -0800 Joshua D. Drake wrote:

> Release 7.3.21 with and EOL addendum :). E.g; this is the last release
> of 7.3 and 7.3 is now considered unsupported.

I know at least one customer who is using RHEL-3 and PG 7.3 on dozens
machines worldwide. Yes, they are moving to 8.2 but this will require
some more month and eventually not all machines can just be updated to
a newer OS/DB version.

So i'm also for stopping support for 7.3 but not the way you proposed.
If we have supported 7.3 up to now, there should be an official notice
with a date, when support ends. This date should not be the next and
final release some days after the notice ;-)

Kind regards

--
Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum
German PostgreSQL User Group

Tom,

> There has been some discussion of making a project policy of dropping
> support for old releases after five years. Should we consider formally
> instituting that?

The community consensus I recall was three versions only. Anything beyond
that would be up to the vendors.

Mind you, I don't know what EDB guarentees but the Sun folks could end up
patching everything back to 8.1 for the next 5 years depending on customer
demand. So I think 5 years will be a reality for us for the conceivable
future.

--
--Josh

Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL @ Sun
San Francisco

Josh Berkus <josh(at)agliodbs(dot)com> writes:
>> There has been some discussion of making a project policy of dropping
>> support for old releases after five years. Should we consider formally
>> instituting that?

> The community consensus I recall was three versions only. Anything beyond
> that would be up to the vendors.

Yeah, but some of us are also the vendors ;-). I still figure that if
I have to maintain branch X for Red Hat, I might as well put those fixes
in the community CVS. I should think that Sun, EDB, et al would also
find it expedient to not need to maintain private patch sets. So it
seems to me that the "vendor" EOL horizons are legitimate to consider
while deciding what the "community" wants to support.

regards, tom lane

"Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum" <adsmail(at)wars-nicht(dot)de> writes:
> On Tue, 27 Nov 2007 11:08:58 -0800 Joshua D. Drake wrote:
>> Release 7.3.21 with and EOL addendum :). E.g; this is the last release
>> of 7.3 and 7.3 is now considered unsupported.

> I know at least one customer who is using RHEL-3 and PG 7.3 on dozens
> machines worldwide.

Are they running 7.3.20? Will they update to 7.3.21 promptly when we
ship it? Or are they using whatever Red Hat includes in RHEL-3?
(which is still 7.3.19 I believe)

One of the reasons for losing interest in frequent updates is that
it seems most of the people we hear from who are running 7.3.x are
running a pretty obsolete "x". If we produce an update and no one
actually installs it, we're just wasting time with make-work.

regards, tom lane

Josh Berkus wrote:
> Tom,
>
>
>> There has been some discussion of making a project policy of dropping
>> support for old releases after five years. Should we consider formally
>> instituting that?
>>
>
> The community consensus I recall was three versions only. Anything beyond
> that would be up to the vendors.
>
> Mind you, I don't know what EDB guarentees but the Sun folks could end up
> patching everything back to 8.1 for the next 5 years depending on customer
> demand. So I think 5 years will be a reality for us for the conceivable
> future.
>
>

I don't know that we came up with a highly specific policy. My
recollection was something like "Support would be maintained for n years
(or possibly releases), after which we could discontinue support at any
time if bugs were unpatchable."

The burden of maintaining back releases isn't really all that great, ISTM.

I have no objection to cutting a release and declaring it final (with a
possible exception for security fixes).

cheers

andrew

On Tuesday 27 November 2007 15:07, Simon Riggs wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-11-27 at 14:02 -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
> > There has been some discussion of making a project policy of dropping
> > support for old releases after five years. Should we consider formally
> > instituting that?
> >
> > I see that there are two or three minor bug fixes in the REL7_3_STABLE
> > branch since 7.3.20. Rather than just leaving those to rot, maybe the
> > actual policy should be "only one more update after 8.3 comes out".
>
> Well, I agree that it shouldn't be your responsibility to do that. We
> need to reduce the things you have to worry about to allow you to focus
> on later releases.
>
> One of the good things about open source is the ability for software to
> remain supported for many years longer than closed source software.
>
> Perhaps we should ask for volunteers to maintain that branch? If we had
> a maintenance release manager, then they can take responsibility for
> passing down any appropriate bug fixes. We could also create a new list
> for people discussing older releases, so we don't get pinged all the
> time.
>
> That way anybody with an application at older release levels can either
> step up to the plate or lose support.

+1 to see if anyone else wants to take over management of the branch. I also
think we should be a bit more generous on the EOL notice. Saying one more
update after 8.3 is akin to giving a 1 month EOL notice; not friendly at all
imo. Set it for July 2008 and I think you have given plenty of notice (and
given the lack of back patches, should be too much of a burden in that time
either)

--
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter LAMP :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL

Hi,

On Tue, 2007-11-27 at 23:53 -0500, Robert Treat wrote:
> I also think we should be a bit more generous on the EOL notice.
> Saying one more update after 8.3 is akin to giving a 1 month EOL
> notice; not friendly at all imo. Set it for July 2008 and I think you
> have given plenty of notice (and given the lack of back patches,
> should be too much of a burden in that time either)

+1 for this.

Regards,
--
Devrim GÜNDÜZ , RHCE
PostgreSQL Replication, Consulting, Custom Development, 24x7 support
Managed Services, Shared and Dedicated Hosting
Co-Authors: plPHP, ODBCng - http://www.commandprompt.com/

Tom Lane napsal(a):

>
> Comments, opinions?

Is it time to remove old communication protocol support and cleanup code in 8.4?

Zdenek

I'm not a developper, but it occured to me that you should consider dropping
the support for client-server wire protocol v2.
I quote a comment I found in JDBC driver's code:

// NOTE: To simplify this code, it is assumed that if we are
// using the V3 protocol, then the database is at least 7.4. That
// eliminates the need to check database versions and maintain
// backward-compatible code here.
//
// Change by Chris Smith <cdsmith(at)twu(dot)net>

This tells me that the v3 protocol appeared at 7.4, so there's no need to
support v2 in future database versions (starting with 8.3?). It would
simplify code in interfaces like JDBC too.

> > I see that there are two or three minor bug fixes in the REL7_3_STABLE
> > branch since 7.3.20. Rather than just leaving those to rot, maybe the
> > actual policy should be "only one more update after 8.3 comes out".
> >
> > Comments, opinions?
>
> Release 7.3.21 with and EOL addendum :). E.g; this is the last release
> of 7.3 and 7.3 is now considered unsupported.

I'm not a developper, but it occured to me that you should consider dropping
the support for client-server wire protocol v2.
I quote a comment I found in JDBC driver's code:

// NOTE: To simplify this code, it is assumed that if we are
// using the V3 protocol, then the database is at least 7.4. That
// eliminates the need to check database versions and maintain
// backward-compatible code here.
//
// Change by Chris Smith <cdsmith(at)twu(dot)net>

This tells me that the v3 protocol appeared at 7.4, so there's no need to
support v2 in future database versions (starting with 8.3?). It would
simplify code in interfaces like JDBC too.

> > I see that there are two or three minor bug fixes in the REL7_3_STABLE
> > branch since 7.3.20. Rather than just leaving those to rot, maybe the
> > actual policy should be "only one more update after 8.3 comes out".
> >
> > Comments, opinions?
>
> Release 7.3.21 with and EOL addendum :). E.g; this is the last release
> of 7.3 and 7.3 is now considered unsupported.

Alexandru Cârstoiu <alexandru(dot)carstoiu(at)excelsarc(dot)ro> writes:

> This tells me that the v3 protocol appeared at 7.4, so there's no need to
> support v2 in future database versions (starting with 8.3?). It would
> simplify code in interfaces like JDBC too.

I think the second half of this is correct. There would be no need to support
the old protocol in client interface drivers since the only supported
databases would all support the new protocol.

Whether there's any need to support the old protocol in the server depends on
whether there are any clients out there which use it which is harder to
determine and not affected by whether Postgres 7.3 is still around.

--
Gregory Stark
EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com
Ask me about EnterpriseDB's On-Demand Production Tuning

On Wednesday 28 November 2007, Gregory Stark wrote:
> > This tells me that the v3 protocol appeared at 7.4, so there's no need to
> > support v2 in future database versions (starting with 8.3?). It would
> > simplify code in interfaces like JDBC too.
>
> I think the second half of this is correct. There would be no need to
> support the old protocol in client interface drivers since the only
> supported databases would all support the new protocol.
>
> Whether there's any need to support the old protocol in the server depends
> on whether there are any clients out there which use it which is harder to
> determine and not affected by whether Postgres 7.3 is still around.

Actually it doesn't make sense to do it halfway (for example, why would you
keep the v2 protocol in the database if it is not supported anymore by
clients?!).
Either you drop v2 support or you don't, if the community is keen on
preserving compatibility between "any" client and "any" database. I for one
am not keen on that. Just as I would drop support for Java older than 1.4 in
the JDBC driver.

Anyway, the decision is not mine.

Gregory Stark <stark(at)enterprisedb(dot)com> writes:
> Whether there's any need to support the old protocol in the server depends on
> whether there are any clients out there which use it which is harder to
> determine and not affected by whether Postgres 7.3 is still around.

Right. There's really not much to be gained by dropping it on the
server side anyway. libpq might possibly be simplified by a useful
amount, but on the other hand we probably want to keep its current
structure for the inevitable v4 protocol.

Another area where we might think about dropping some stuff is pg_dump.
If we got rid of the requirement to support dumps from pre-7.3 servers
then it could assume server-side dependencies exist, and lose all the
code for trying to behave sanely without 'em.

regards, tom lane

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On Wed, 28 Nov 2007 13:30:55 +0000
Gregory Stark <stark(at)enterprisedb(dot)com> wrote:

> Alexandru Cârstoiu <alexandru(dot)carstoiu(at)excelsarc(dot)ro> writes:
>
> > This tells me that the v3 protocol appeared at 7.4, so there's no
> > need to support v2 in future database versions (starting with
> > 8.3?). It would simplify code in interfaces like JDBC too.
>
> I think the second half of this is correct. There would be no need to
> support the old protocol in client interface drivers since the only
> supported databases would all support the new protocol.

Except that we just broke the proposed upgrade path if we do that...
Let's not put people in a catch-22.

Joshua D. Drake

- --

=== The PostgreSQL Company: Command Prompt, Inc. ===
Sales/Support: +1.503.667.4564 24x7/Emergency: +1.800.492.2240
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Tom Lane wrote:
> Gregory Stark <stark(at)enterprisedb(dot)com> writes:
>> Whether there's any need to support the old protocol in the server depends on
>> whether there are any clients out there which use it which is harder to
>> determine and not affected by whether Postgres 7.3 is still around.
>
> Right. There's really not much to be gained by dropping it on the
> server side anyway. libpq might possibly be simplified by a useful
> amount, but on the other hand we probably want to keep its current
> structure for the inevitable v4 protocol.

If we officially remove support for it, we could make modifications to
it without having to consider V2 support. Not that I have any in the
pipeline, but certainly it would make future changes easier if you don't
have to consider backwards compatibility.

Perhaps we could add a warnings message to the logs when a user connects
using the v2 protocol for now, to give users fair warning? (and then
drop it per 8.4). Or to take it even further, a guc that disables
protocol v2 by default but can be enabled for users who are actually
using it?

> Another area where we might think about dropping some stuff is pg_dump.
> If we got rid of the requirement to support dumps from pre-7.3 servers
> then it could assume server-side dependencies exist, and lose all the
> code for trying to behave sanely without 'em.

That would certainly simplify it. There'd still be a supported upgrade
path - just start by upgrading to 8.2 (or really, any supported
version), *then* upgrade from that version to the latest one. That kind
of required-step upgrade is fairly common with commercial products, and
given how old 7.3 is I think it would be very acceptable.

//Magnus

On Tue, 27 Nov 2007 15:37:04 -0500 Tom Lane wrote:

> "Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum" <adsmail(at)wars-nicht(dot)de> writes:
> > On Tue, 27 Nov 2007 11:08:58 -0800 Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> >> Release 7.3.21 with and EOL addendum :). E.g; this is the last release
> >> of 7.3 and 7.3 is now considered unsupported.
>
> > I know at least one customer who is using RHEL-3 and PG 7.3 on dozens
> > machines worldwide.
>
> Are they running 7.3.20? Will they update to 7.3.21 promptly when we
> ship it? Or are they using whatever Red Hat includes in RHEL-3?
> (which is still 7.3.19 I believe)

I'm not sure, which micro version they are using right now. I only know,
they have 7.3.x, cause i already had to take care of this on some
projects.

> One of the reasons for losing interest in frequent updates is that
> it seems most of the people we hear from who are running 7.3.x are
> running a pretty obsolete "x". If we produce an update and no one
> actually installs it, we're just wasting time with make-work.

I said: we should not disband support of 7.3 today, release a final
version next week and that's it. Something like 3, 4 month of
pre-announce seems to be ok for me and i don't think, this makes much
difference.

Kind regards

--
Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum
Failure is not an option. It comes bundled with your Microsoft product.
(Ferenc Mantfeld)

On Tue, 27 Nov 2007 23:53:14 -0500 Robert Treat wrote:

> I also think we should be a bit more generous on the EOL notice. Saying one more
> update after 8.3 is akin to giving a 1 month EOL notice; not friendly at all
> imo. Set it for July 2008 and I think you have given plenty of notice (and
> given the lack of back patches, should be too much of a burden in that time
> either)

+1 for that.

Kind regards

--
Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum
Failure is not an option. It comes bundled with your Microsoft product.
(Ferenc Mantfeld)

+1

On Nov 29, 2007 4:09 AM, Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum <adsmail(at)wars-nicht(dot)de>
wrote:

> On Tue, 27 Nov 2007 15:37:04 -0500 Tom Lane wrote:
>
> > "Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum" <adsmail(at)wars-nicht(dot)de> writes:
> > > On Tue, 27 Nov 2007 11:08:58 -0800 Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> > >> Release 7.3.21 with and EOL addendum :). E.g; this is the last
> release
> > >> of 7.3 and 7.3 is now considered unsupported.
> >
> > > I know at least one customer who is using RHEL-3 and PG 7.3 on dozens
> > > machines worldwide.
> >
> > Are they running 7.3.20? Will they update to 7.3.21 promptly when we
> > ship it? Or are they using whatever Red Hat includes in RHEL-3?
> > (which is still 7.3.19 I believe)
>
> I'm not sure, which micro version they are using right now. I only know,
> they have 7.3.x, cause i already had to take care of this on some
> projects.
>
>
> > One of the reasons for losing interest in frequent updates is that
> > it seems most of the people we hear from who are running 7.3.x are
> > running a pretty obsolete "x". If we produce an update and no one
> > actually installs it, we're just wasting time with make-work.
>
> I said: we should not disband support of 7.3 today, release a final
> version next week and that's it. Something like 3, 4 month of
> pre-announce seems to be ok for me and i don't think, this makes much
> difference.
>
>
> Kind regards
>
> --
> Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum
> Failure is not an option. It comes bundled with your Microsoft product.
> (Ferenc Mantfeld)
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 9: In versions below 8.0, the planner will ignore your desire to
> choose an index scan if your joining column's datatypes do not
> match
>

Robert Treat wrote:
> On Tuesday 27 November 2007 15:07, Simon Riggs wrote:
>> On Tue, 2007-11-27 at 14:02 -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
>>> There has been some discussion of making a project policy of dropping
>>> support for old releases after five years. Should we consider formally
>>> instituting that?
>>> ...
>> Perhaps we should ask for volunteers to maintain that branch? ...
>
> +1 to see if anyone else wants to take over management of the branch. I also
> think we should be a bit more generous on the EOL notice.

One thing that could soften the blow is if the EOL notice mentions
which commercial organizations will provide paid support for longer
than the community does.

I assume that's one of the benefits of going with the commercial
support organizations?

On Nov 29, 2007 11:11 AM, Ron Mayer <rm_pg(at)cheapcomplexdevices(dot)com> wrote:

> Robert Treat wrote:
> > On Tuesday 27 November 2007 15:07, Simon Riggs wrote:
> >> On Tue, 2007-11-27 at 14:02 -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
> >>> There has been some discussion of making a project policy of dropping
> >>> support for old releases after five years. Should we consider
> formally
> >>> instituting that?
> >>> ...
> >> Perhaps we should ask for volunteers to maintain that branch? ...
> >
> > +1 to see if anyone else wants to take over management of the branch. I
> also
> > think we should be a bit more generous on the EOL notice.
>
> One thing that could soften the blow is if the EOL notice mentions
> which commercial organizations will provide paid support for longer
> than the community does.
>
> I assume that's one of the benefits of going with the commercial
> support organizations?

I bet there's plenty. Perhaps calling it an EOL is a mistake since the
concept does not perfectly map between OSS and commercial software. I doubt
there are any plans to trim the 7.3 branch from CVS and I imagine that the
community will be happy to work with anyone who wishes to back-port patches,
up to and perhaps including rolling their patch into CVS. This is very
different from a traditional EOL. Perhaps "Switching over to passive / user
driven support" is a better way to phrase this? We can of course emphasize
the availability of commercial organizations that are willing to take over
"active" support for anyone willing to pay for it.

Do we have any numbers on the downloads of 7.3.x for the last few values of
x? That might be a good indicator of how many people are actually following
the upgrade path.

Andrew

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On Thu, 29 Nov 2007 12:00:51 -0800
"Andrew Hammond" <andrew(dot)george(dot)hammond(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:

> software. I doubt there are any plans to trim the 7.3 branch from CVS
> and I imagine that the community will be happy to work with anyone

Considering we still have Postgres95 in the tree I would bet you are
right :)

Joshua D. Drake
- --

=== The PostgreSQL Company: Command Prompt, Inc. ===
Sales/Support: +1.503.667.4564 24x7/Emergency: +1.800.492.2240
PostgreSQL solutions since 1997 http://www.commandprompt.com/
UNIQUE NOT NULL
Donate to the PostgreSQL Project: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate
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Added to TODO:

o Remove pre-7.3 pg_dump code that assumes pg_depend does not exit

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tom Lane wrote:
> Gregory Stark <stark(at)enterprisedb(dot)com> writes:
> > Whether there's any need to support the old protocol in the server depends on
> > whether there are any clients out there which use it which is harder to
> > determine and not affected by whether Postgres 7.3 is still around.
>
> Right. There's really not much to be gained by dropping it on the
> server side anyway. libpq might possibly be simplified by a useful
> amount, but on the other hand we probably want to keep its current
> structure for the inevitable v4 protocol.
>
> Another area where we might think about dropping some stuff is pg_dump.
> If we got rid of the requirement to support dumps from pre-7.3 servers
> then it could assume server-side dependencies exist, and lose all the
> code for trying to behave sanely without 'em.
>
> regards, tom lane
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 7: You can help support the PostgreSQL project by donating at
>
> http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> http://momjian.us
EnterpriseDB http://postgres.enterprisedb.com

+ If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +