bitten by docs

From: Alfred Perlstein <bright(at)wintelcom(dot)net>
To: PostgreSQL Development <pgsql-hackers(at)postgreSQL(dot)org>
Subject: bitten by docs
Date: 2000-03-02 04:33:34
Message-ID: 20000301203334.B21720@fw.wintelcom.net
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Hey I just got bitten by something in the docs:
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/user/datatype1029.htm

specifically:

Note: To ensure compatibility to earlier versions of PostgreSQL
we also continue to provide datetime (equivalent to timestamp)
and timespan (equivalent to interval).
The types abstime and reltime are lower precision types which
are used internally. You are discouraged from using any of these
types in new applications and move any old ones over when
appropriate. Any or all of these type might disappear in a future
release.

after reading this I quickly converted all my datetime into timestamp
then I got bitten because a lot of my scripts were using date functions
that don't seem to support timestamp as an argument, specifically
date_part().

Now if date_part() doesn't take timestamps in 7.0 that needs to be
addressed, however it seems that this change took place some time
after the 6.5 release.

I also realized that my changes to the docs in re async libpq functions
probably are confusing the hell out of people using the 'stable' 6.5.

Getting to the point, wouldn't it be easier on the users if either:

a) at release time the www docs are frozen but a link is made to the
HEAD branch of the docs so people can see what's going on in
current development.
b) maintain a -stable (off the 6.5 branch) of the docs that gets
fixes put into it relative to the release while still having a link
to the most current docs. I know the inconvience of maintaining
a branch is annoying but this is the best way imo.

I think providing for this when 7.0 comes out would really assist
users, as the next release rolls around it's going to be just too
easy to get confused.

thanks,
--
-Alfred Perlstein - [bright(at)wintelcom(dot)net|alfred(at)freebsd(dot)org]

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