From: Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com>
Reply-To: josh@agliodbs.com
Organization: Aglio Database Solutions
To: pgsql-advocacy@postgresql.org
Subject: Avoiding upgrade backlash
Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2007 14:42:30 -0800
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Message-Id: <200711121442.31233.josh@agliodbs.com>

Hackers,

I'm seeing from reports on IRC that 8.3 may cause an unprecedented number 
of upgrade issues for users who have old, badly-written applications.  
Stefan K, for example, was reporting the necessity of re-writing 3000 
lines of his PL/pgSQL code on an older app (about 10%).

While we are right to choke down abuse of implicit casting, it might be a 
good idea to give users stronger warnings and instructions.  

I'm thinking that we need to warn everyone about:
1) They need to use 8.3's pg_dump, not the old version, to upgrade (this is 
always true but now doing it wrong will break a lot more users).
2) They need to check for bugs
3) If Robert gets his type-cast backport package together, the location of 
that.

I'm thinking this warning should go (prominently) into the release notes, 
the community notice, and the extended web release.

-- 
--Josh

Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL @ Sun
San Francisco