Re: Reports on obsolete Postgres versions

Hi,

On Mon, Mar 11, 2024 at 05:17:13PM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 11, 2024 at 04:12:04PM -0500, Nathan Bossart wrote:
> > On Mon, Mar 11, 2024 at 04:37:49PM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > > https://www.postgresql.org/support/versioning/
> > >
> > > This web page should correct the idea that "upgrades are more risky than
> > > staying with existing versions". Is there more we can do? Should we
> > > have a more consistent response for such reporters?
> >
> > I've read that the use of the term "minor release" can be confusing. While
> > the versioning page clearly describes what is eligible for a minor release,
> > not everyone reads it, so I suspect that many folks think there are new
> > features, etc. in minor releases. I think a "minor release" of Postgres is
> > more similar to what other projects would call a "patch version."
>
> Well, we do say:
>
> While upgrading will always contain some level of risk, PostgreSQL
> minor releases fix only frequently-encountered bugs, security issues,
> and data corruption problems to reduce the risk associated with
> upgrading. For minor releases, the community considers not upgrading to
> be riskier than upgrading.
>
> but that is far down the page. Do we need to improve this?

I liked the statement from Laurenz a while ago on his blog
(paraphrased): "Upgrading to the latest patch release does not require
application testing or recertification". I am not sure we want to put
that into the official page (or maybe tone down/qualify it a bit), but I
think a lot of users stay on older minor versions because they dread
their internal testing policies.

The other thing that could maybe be made a bit better is the fantastic
patch release schedule, which however is buried in the "developer
roadmap". I can see how this was useful years ago, but I think this page
should be moved to the end-user part of the website, and maybe (also)
integrated into the support/versioning page?

Michael