Re: How does Postgres support backwards compatibility

Thank you David. I was unsure if this had already been discussed and
documented somewhere already. I will reask in general.

On Tue, Feb 8, 2022 at 11:04 AM David G. Johnston <
david(dot)g(dot)johnston(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 8, 2022 at 11:51 AM Josh Innis <joshinnis(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>
>>
>> I work on an extension for Postgres. We originally developed the
>> extension for Postgres 11. Now we are looking into supporting newer
>> versions of Postgres. We would like our extension to be compatible with
>> multiple versions of Postgres. Is there a document that explains how the
>> Postgres community handles releases and supports older versions? Any
>> information on how Postgres handles this will give us guidance on how to
>> best approach this subject.
>>
>>
> This really isn't the right place to ask this kind of question. -general
> would be a good place, you'll still reach the people who can respond
> intelligently. I'll toss out my $0.02 here though I'm not that deep in the
> weeds on the topic.
>
> Major releases don't really make any promises but we do try not to break
> things that worked in older versions gratuitously. Usually you need your
> code to perform version detection and adapt its behavior accordingly. But
> since the library code needs to be compiled for a particular version there
> is some room customization there if desired. You will want your extension
> to directly support at least two major version simultaneously so people can
> upgrade the extension alongside the PostgreSQL version upgrade without
> having to change their code on-the-fly.
>
> David J.
>
>