Re: pg_dump versus ancient server versions

Hi,

On 2021-10-22 19:30:25 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> Yeah. I checked into when it was that we dropped pre-8.0 support
> from pg_dump, and the answer is just about five years ago (64f3524e2).
> So moving the bar forward by five releases isn't at all out of line.
> 8.4 would be eight years past EOL by the time v15 comes out.

I'd really like us to adopt a "default" policy on this. I think it's a waste
to spend time every few years arguing what exact versions to drop. I'd much
rather say that, unless there are concrete reasons to deviate from that, we
provide pg_dump compatibility for 5+3 releases, pg_upgrade for 5+1, and psql
for 5 releases or something like that.

It's fine to not actually spend the time to excise support for old versions
every release if not useful, but we should be able to "just do it" whenever
version compat is a meaningful hindrance.

Greetings,

Andres Freund