Re: libpq: Bump protocol version to version 3.2 at least until the first/second beta

On Sat, 24 Jan 2026 at 00:38, Jacob Champion
<jacob(dot)champion(at)enterprisedb(dot)com> wrote:
> WDYT?

Overall, I think the changes and the split look fine. And I'd be happy
with having it committed as is.

A few thoughts on the docs:
1. I like the version table split. I think it might be better to do
the same for protocol extensions too. Primarily because I think the
tiny empty cell at the start of each row looks weird (see screenshot),
but also just for consistency.
2. In my v5 I created a dedicated section header for protocol
extensions instead of including it in the extension. I think that's
slightly nicer, primarily so you can link to that section from the
StartupMessage docs (including the introductory paragraph), instead of
having to link to the table.
3. In the table in my v5 I use "extension name" as a column instead of
"parameter name" so I did not have to include the "_pq_." prefix. I'm
going a bit back and forth between which I like better.
4. I think mentioning the "_pq_." prefix in the paragraph above the
extension table would be good. Otherwise once we get more extensions
you only learn about it once you get to the reserved extensions
section.

A few thoughts on the implementation:
1. If you like the randomization I did in my v5-0003, but don't want
to commit it yet. Then I think it would be good to change the reserved
protocol extension to rename to _pq_.test_protocol_negotiation_0000.
So that if we commit it later we don't have both
_pq_.test_protocol_negotiation and _pq_.test_protocol_negotiation_XXXX
reserved, but only have the one with a suffix reserved.
2. It might be nice to also error duplicate keys in NegotiateProtocolVersion.