Re: Removing binaries (was: createlang/droplang deprecated)

On 03/19/2017 07:35 PM, Stephen Frost wrote:
> * Tom Lane (tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us) wrote:
>> Stephen Frost <sfrost(at)snowman(dot)net> writes:
>> (Or in other words, we've been getting along fine with these script names
>> for circa twenty years, so what's the rush to change them RIGHT NOW?)
>
> To be clear, I'm not in any particular rush to change them 'RIGHT NOW'.
> I tend to agree with Magnus that we're doing a lot of other things in
> PG10 and that makes it a bit of a natural point, but I don't hold that
> position terribly strongly. On the other hand, I do not relish the idea
> of providing backwards-compatibility for every user-facing change we do
> for 5 years and that's where I feel this approach is encouraging us to
> go.

I only think that argument is only applicable where the changes are
closely related, e.g. renaming pg_clog, pg_xlog and pg_log in the same
release. I do not see any strong connection between createuser and pg_xlog.

As for if we should have backwards compatibility for the old names I am
leaning weakly for providing it in the case of createuser. I can see end
users being pissed off that the createuser command is suddenly gone
without any warning when they upgrade. On the flip side I have no idea
how much work it would be to maintain those legacy names.

Andreas