Re: 8.4 release planning

Magnus Hagander <magnus(at)hagander(dot)net> writes:

> Josh Berkus wrote:
>>
>> One client is planning on deploying a rather complex FS cloning
>> infrastructure just to have a bunch of reporting, testing and read-only
>> search databases they need. They'd be thrilled with an HS feature which
>> produced DBs which were an hour out of date (or even 6 hours out of
>> date), but ran read-only queries.
>
> I have a lot of clients who would be thrilled to have stuff that's been
> in our tree for half a year by now, and they'd be thrilled to have it
> *now*. How much extra should we have them wait for the needs of your
> clients?

I really am unconvinced by the argument that delaying existing features is a
big deal. Logically it's less of a big deal than delaying HS a whole release
cycle which I already said I think isn't a big deal either. This is purely a
question of latency between development and release; we still get just as much
in each release, it's just 6-12 months later than it might have been.

What bothers me is delaying work on things like Bitmap Indexes which won't
really start in earnest until Gianni can get feedback from the lists after the
release. Or Join Removal which Simon isn't going to look at until after HS is
committed (not *released* -- once it's *committed* he'll be free to go on to
other things). This would impact *bandwidth* of development which I think is a
much bigger deal. It reduces the amount of new features in each release, not
just which release they fall in.

I'm a bit shocked by how long Tom expects the release cycle to take even if we
froze the code today. I guess I forget how long it takes and how many steps
there are from past releases. If it's going to be 9+ months between Nov 1st
and the first commitfest I'm worried about how many patches will be
languishing in the queue with their authors having moved on to other more
fruitful pastures in the mean time. If we delay further we're talking about
close to a year with developers left hanging.

--
Gregory Stark
EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com
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