Re: State of support for back PG branches

[David Fetter <david(at)fetter(dot)org>]

On Mon, Sep 26, 2005 at 05:57:08PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> I had originally been planning to back-port this fix:
> http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-committers/2005-08/msg00213.php
> as far as 7.2.  I've completed the back-port as far as 7.3, but
> found that 7.2 would be significantly more work because the API of
> heap_fetch() would need to change from what it was back then, and
> the patch would therefore have to touch many places that it does not
> touch in later versions.  Given that the bug is so low-probability
> that it's escaped detection all this time, it doesn't really seem
> worth the effort (not to mention risk of creating new bugs).
> 
> This brings up the question of whether we should officially abandon
> support for 7.2 and/or later branches.  I don't think anyone is
> planning on supporting old branches forever, but when do we stop?
> 
> I have a corporate need to keep supporting 7.3, at least to the
> extent of critical bug fixes, because Red Hat is still on the hook
> to support that version in RHEL3 for awhile longer.  I have no such
> interest in 7.2 (which is one reason I'm not excited about doing the
> extra work to back-patch the VACUUM/ctid fix).  I can definitely see
> that the community might not want to expend more effort on 7.3,
> though.  I have no idea what the needs of other distributions might
> be.
> 
> Thoughts anyone?

Expiry dates are good.  Although there are people who don't read
anything, enough people will read release notes that have a definite
date attached, as in:

PostgreSQL 8.1
Released:               November 30, 2005
Community support ends: November 30, 2008

This could be softened a bit in a sentence or two below :)

Cheers,
D
-- 
David Fetter david(at)fetter(dot)org http://fetter.org/
phone: +1 510 893 6100   mobile: +1 415 235 3778

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