Re: First draft of PG 19 release notes

On Sun, Nov 8, 2026 at 08:46:24AM -0700, David G. Johnston wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 8, 2026 at 8:16 AM Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> wrote:
> Actually, you do need to read all the 17.X and 18.x release notes
> because while some of those items are backpatched to 16.X, others are
> specific to the 17.X and 18.X branches.  This is the crux of the problem
> --- that we mix backpatched and major-version-specific items in the same
> release notes.  I see no way of improving that.
>
> If the action needs to be taken post pg_upgrade too, and not just during a
> minor release update, it should be added into the N.0 migration section.  We
> can limit what we put there by assuming all such migration actions in minor
> releases of earlier versions have already been performed.  I would welcome an
> example of something that meets this criteria.

We could add a feature in 17.0 and change its behavior in 17.4, then
release 18.0. In that case, if ugrading from 16 to 18, and you read
only 17.0, you will not see the 17.4 change. Listing the 17.4 change in
18.0 would be confusing. The example of needing to reindex is just an
example of this.

> My other, not mutually exclusive, idea is to put 'Migrations' in the E1
> position of the appendix and remove migration from the individual version
> sections.  This reduces greatly the number of links to follow that all end up
> just saying the same thing anyway (in the migration section anyway).

Well, how would you indicate which versions are affected by the
migrations? You might have a migration issue in 17.2.

--
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.