Re: Selling an 8.1 to 8.3 upgrade

On Sat, Apr 25, 2009 at 11:28 AM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> Merlin Moncure <mmoncure(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
>> On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 1:01 PM, Josh Trutwin <josh(at)trutwins(dot)homeip(dot)net> wrote:
>>> Sorry this is so vague, I'm frustrated with this request as I figured
>>> just the amount of bug-fixes alone would be adequate reasoning.
>
>> It's not.  There are probably more people using 8.1 than 8.3 and 8.1
>> has had more time to mature.  From bug fix perspective, it's probably
>> better (aside from some 'broken design' bugs that couldn't be
>> backpatched, like plan invalidation).
>
> That's a fair point, but *only* if the 8.1 installation in question is
> reasonably up to date.  If you're running something like 8.1.4 then
> you're short several years of bug fixes, and it becomes much less
> clear that what you've got is less buggy than 8.3.recent.
>
> It would be interesting sometime to gather statistics on how far back
> bug fixes tend to go in released branches.  My sense of it is that
> there's quite a large fraction that have to go back more than one
> branch; but I have no numbers to back this up.
>
> (The point is fresh in mind since I'm busy right now fixing an
> aggregate/subselect bug that dates back to 7.4.)

My first thought would be to poll the website. This might lead to bad
representative sample though...the people who check the website
frequently are more likely to be hip and up to the latest version.

Maybe pull some redhat strings and see whats going on with the server
distros? They might have some stats on how many pg rpms are out
there. I'd venture to say a lot of poeple stick with what's ever
provided with the o/s.

merlin