Re: [pgsql-hackers] Patent issues and 8.1

Robert Treat <xzilla(at)users(dot)sourceforge(dot)net> writes:
> I'm not mischarecterizing, I just feel that putting out an lru based 8.0.x
> release is such a bad idea that I'd rather do (1) than gamble on (2).

I don't understand why you think it's such a bad idea. We do have the
problem of getting adequate testing, but I think the answer to that
is to put the same patch into HEAD as well.

> We can branch 8.1 and 8.2 now, with 2month dev planned for 8.1 and a
> 12 month dev for 8.2 and go about things.

I will resist that idea strongly. We have no experience as a community
with managing multiple active development branches, and I feel certain
that we'd mess it up (eg, commit things into the wrong branch, or fail
to commit things into both branches that need to be in both). Case in
point: Teodor has already, without discussion, committed 8.1 changes in
tsearch2 that should force an initdb. If we were taking the idea of a
backward-compatible 8.1 seriously we'd have to make him back that out of
8.1. I can't see trying to ride herd on all the committers to make sure
no one unintentionally breaks file-level compatibility over a whole dev
cycle, even a short one.

regards, tom lane