Re: [HACKERS] Re: SSL patch

The Hermit Hacker <scrappy(at)hub(dot)org> writes:
> I may be lost here, so forgive me ahead of time...but, if I'm reading
> Magnus' email correctly, this just breaks backward compatibility...with
> the change, pre-6.6 clients would not be able to talk to a 6.6 server, but
> 6.7 and 6.6 would be compatible?

As long as we don't change it again for 6.7, yeah ... but that doesn't
seem like the point.

What I'm concerned about is that we'd have neither compatibility between
existing clients and new servers nor existing servers and new clients.
When we changed the protocol for 6.4, we got quite a bit of flak about
6.4 clients not talking to old servers. But that was just a one-way
whammy: a 6.4 server would still talk to old clients. This change is
gonna be a double whammy.

I think we at least need to find a way to have new servers be able to
talk to old clients. Otherwise, it'll be *very* difficult to upgrade
to 6.6 at large installations; you'd have to change all the clients
simultaneously with the server. Those clients aren't necessarily all
on the same machine, and some may not even be under the db admin's
direct control. It looks like a recipe for major headaches to me.

regards, tom lane