On Tue, 2003-10-21 at 00:08, Tom Lane wrote: > Christopher Kings-Lynne <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > It had occurred to me that we could move support for each version of the > > backend into a shared lib. > > eg. libpsql70.so, libpsql71.so, etc. > > Then all we do is load the appropriate lib and call functions in it. To > > support a newer version of postgres, you just need to drop in the latest > > .so or something. > > It doesn't strike me that that actually buys you anything, except > perhaps guaranteeing that psql cannot function on shared-lib-less > platforms. The clear facts at the moment are that an older psql > cannot be promised to have full functionality with newer backends. > Saying "well it'll work if you install a newer shared library" does > not buy a thing that I can see --- it's no more effort to install > a whole new psql, is it? > > Rod's ideas about pushing psql functionality out to the backend > (via special views etc) could ameliorate the forward-compatibility > problem to some extent. But we usually find ourselves fixing psql > in more places than describe.c for each release, so I'm not convinced > there's a full solution available in that direction either.
There is always the biggest evil of all... Putting SHOW / DESCRIBE / HELP commands into the backend itself. I'm sure the pgAdmin group likes that idea (they're probably tired of maintaining 4 different versions of queries for getting a list of tables). Any solution to make psql backward or forward compatible should go an additional step to assist other frontends as well.
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