Re: Collation version tracking for macOS

On Fri, Jun 3, 2022 at 4:58 PM Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> I think the real problem here is that the underlying software mostly
> doesn't take this issue seriously. Unfortunately, that leads one to
> the conclusion that we need to maintain our own collation code and
> data (e.g., our own fork of ICU), and that isn't happening. Unlike
> say Oracle, we do not have the manpower; nor do we want to bloat our
> code base that much.

You don't, but that opinion isn't universally held, or at least not
with the same vigor that you hold it. See e.g.
https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/a4019c5e570d4dbb5e3f816c080fb57c76ab604a.camel%40cybertec.at
and subsequent discussion, for example.

In fact, I'd go so far as to argue that you're basically sticking your
head in the sand here. You wrote:

"Given the lack of complaints, it doesn't seem
like this is urgent enough to mandate a post-beta change that would
have lots of downside (namely, false-positive warnings for every other
macOS update)."

But you wrote that to Peter, who was essentially complaining that we
hadn't done anything, and linked to another source, which was also
complaining about the problem, and then Jeremy Schneider replied to
your email and complained some more.

Complaining about "false positives" doesn't really make sense to me.
It's true that we don't have any false positives right now, but we
also have no true positives. Even a stopped clock is right twice a
day, but not in a useful way. People want to be notified when a
problem might exist, even if sometimes it doesn't actually. The
alternative is having no idea at all that things might be broken,
which is not better.

--
Robert Haas
EDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com