Re: Do we really need a 7.4.22 release now?

From: Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>
To: "Joshua D(dot) Drake" <jd(at)commandprompt(dot)com>
Cc: Greg Sabino Mullane <greg(at)turnstep(dot)com>, pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: Do we really need a 7.4.22 release now?
Date: 2008-09-18 16:44:24
Message-ID: 21893.1221756264@sss.pgh.pa.us
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"Joshua D. Drake" <jd(at)commandprompt(dot)com> writes:
> Greg Sabino Mullane wrote:
>> - From a business perspective, there has been no reason to go through the
>> pain and downtime of an upgrade, as long as the PG project is releasing
>> point revisions to the 7.4 branch. As I said, I'm all for getting people
>> off 7.4, but it needs to be done with a definite date, and December is
>> way too soon.

> Specifying an EOL date does not stop people from continuing to run 7.4.
> They can set their own time lines to get off the release. They can also
> pay someone to update the back branch if it is that important to them.

Yeah. What this is about is how long the *community* supports 7.4
(for free, and at the cost of time that might be better spent on
development).

Looking at the CVS logs makes it pretty obvious that we've been
effectively partially desupporting 7.4, and even 8.0 and 8.1 to some
extent, for awhile now. There have been numerous patches that were not
carried all the way back because they would have needed major revisions
for the older branches --- not because the problem didn't exist in some
form or other back then. The community hasn't got the interest or
resources to create such patches, much less to QA them to the level
where a person too conservative to move off an old branch would think
the patches were safe.

It's really past time to make it clear to all concerned that if they
want continued bug fixes for 7.4, they'd better start paying somebody
to do it.

regards, tom lane

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