Re: Our feature change policy

On Mon, Mar 20, 2017 at 10:35 AM, Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> wrote:
> We keep re-litigating changes, either with pg_xlog, binaries, or
> pg_stat_activity, and at some point we need to settle on a
> policy. The usual "change" options are:
>
> 1. make the change now and mention it in the release notes
> 2. #1, but also provide backward compatibility for 5+ years
> 3. mark the feature as deprecated and remove/change it in 5+ years
> 4. #3, but issue a warning for deprecated usage
>
> What causes us to choose different outcomes?

Well, sometimes backward compatibility is more possible than at other
times. With standard_confirming_strings, we made it a GUC, but that
doesn't work with renaming a column in pg_stat_activity. Also,
there's a big difference in my mind between changes that affect DBAs
and changes that affect user queries.

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company