Re: Retiring some encodings?

On Thu, May 22, 2025 at 02:44:39PM +0300, Heikki Linnakangas wrote:
> On 22/05/2025 08:54, Michael Paquier wrote:
> > With all that in mind, I have wanted to kick a discussion about
> > potentially removing one or more encodings from the core code,
> > including the backend part, the frontend part and the conversion
> > routines, coupled with checks in pg_upgrade to complain with database
> > or collations include the so-said encoding (the collation part needs
> > to be checked when not using ICU). Just being able to removing
> > GB18030 would do us a favor in the long-term, at least, but there's
> > more.
>
> +1 at high level for deprecating and removing conversions that are not
> widely used anymore. As the first step, we can at least add a warning to the
> documentation, that they will be removed in the future.

Agreed on notification. A radical idea would be to add a warning for
the use of such encodings in PG 18, and then mention their deprecation
in the PG 18 release notes so everyone is informed they will be removed
in PG 19.

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> https://momjian.us
EDB https://enterprisedb.com

Do not let urgent matters crowd out time for investment in the future.