On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 11:44 AM, Jonah H. Harris <jonah.har...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 11:33 AM, Tom Lane <t...@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote: >> >> > That would depend on timing then. Trying to get people to upgrade to >> > 8.4 is >> > going to be difficult if they're waiting on Hot Standby, which means >> > less >> > in-the-field testing of the 8.4 code base until the 8.5 release. >> >> [ deja vu... ] Just like no one was going to bother upgrading to 8.3 >> because what they wanted wouldn't be there till 8.4, and the similar >> claims we heard about 8.2 and 8.1 before that ... > > I'm not trying to be an alarmist, I'm just stating what I saw when I was @ > EDB. Customers, especially those with large databases or small admin teams, > would definitely wait for features before upgrading. Some people waited > specifically for HOT or features that would benefit them specifically. My > only gripe with a small window between 8.4 and 8.5 was just that I believe > people would be more likely to wait until 8.5 rather than upgrading twice in > the same year. Though, as I generally like people to be using the latest > version of PG, I'd certainly be happy to be wrong on this.
We've got folks working on the upgrade to 8.3; 8.4 isn't on our radar yet, particularly in view of the fact that it's getting pretty nebulous when 8.4 will be production-worthy :-). It would surprise me not at all if we never got around to an 8.4 deployment, irrespective of whether we hold off another 6 months to get more of hot standby into it or not. Based on that metric, I suppose I ought to prefer for us to get 8.4 out the door more quickly, and start seeing work progress on the 8.5 backlog, which would presumably include the two large O/S patches (e.g. - hot standby, SE-PG). I suppose there are two, possibly 3 directions to consider, with respective merits and demerits: 1. Suppose we cut things off now, and say "push that stuff to 8.5"... - Simon and KaiGai will be justifiably angry since they *have* been doing the right kinds of things, and were expecting to see their material in 8.4. - On the other hand, their work would be among the first considered for 8.5, so that they'd not be behind the way they were for 8.4. - We *won't* irritate the somewhat numerous set of people with patches already awaiting 8.5,<http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/CommitFest_2009-First> and allow those patches to "bit rot" in the interim. 2. Alternatively, we may press on... - We may put off 8.4 for an extra 4-6 months. - Everyone loses the utility of the features already committed in 8.4 for that extra period of time. - We irritate everyone that was accepting that their contributions would be waiting until the first 8.5 commitfest. 3. There's always the possibility of a "worst of all worlds." - All the irritations and losses of #2 - For whatever reason, we don't get usable hot standby / SEPostgreSQL at the end of it. I'm getting increasingly scared of #2 and #3. >From a purely selfish perspective, neither of these features are ones I was expecting to be using in the short or medium term (I don't actually see a use case for SELinux, myself). I'll note that as my bias, but I don't think that invalidates the analysis of the 3 directions. -- http://linuxfinances.info/info/linuxdistributions.html Robert Benchley - "Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing." -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
