Re: Bug#342369: PostgreSQL 8.1.0 RHEL / Debian incompatible

On Tue, 13 Dec 2005, Stephen Frost wrote:

> * Stephan Szabo (sszabo(at)megazone(dot)bigpanda(dot)com) wrote:
>
> > In and of itself it's a good option. However, choosing that option means
> > that Debian is saying that compatibility of data files with default
> > compiled PostgreSQL is not one of its primary concerns, which is a
> > reasonable statement, but it's still not the community's problem when
> > people can't move data to it.
>
> Honestly, in the end I think the default should be changed.

I agree, but that's pretty unrelated to the overall discussion as I see
it. The discussion is not really about whether integer datetime is a good
idea, but instead about packaging because this isn't necessarily the only
option ever going forward for which this could occur. Changing the
defaults might make this case go away, but it doesn't solve the underlying
issue that people have expectations that aren't necessarily true if the
packages (and source tree) don't make equivalent choices.