Feedback-ID: ia2694551:Fastmail
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2024 10:51:39 +0200
From: Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@alvh.no-ip.org>
To: Jelte Fennema-Nio <postgres@jeltef.nl>
Cc: Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>, 
	Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com>, pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: First draft of PG 17 release notes
Message-ID: <202409100851.pez2hyu33gtw@alvherre.pgsql>
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On 2024-Sep-10, Jelte Fennema-Nio wrote:

> I think as an extension author there are usually three types of
> changes that are relevant:
>
> 1. New APIs/hooks that are meant for extension authors

> For 1, I think adding them to the release notes makes total sense,
> especially if the new APIs are documented not only in source code, but
> also on the website. Nathan his change is of this type, so I agree
> with him it should be in the release notes.

I agree.  The volume of such items should be pretty small.

> 3. Stuff that changes behaviour of existing APIs code in a
> incompatible but silent way

> For 3, it would be very useful if it would be in the release notes,
> but I think in many cases it's hard to know what commits do this. So
> unless it's obviously going to break a bunch of extensions silently, I
> think we don't have to add such changes to the release notes.

While we cannot be 100% vigilant (and it doesn't seem likely for
automated tools to detect this), we try to avoid API changes that would
still compile but behave incompatibly.  In many review discussions you
can see suggestions to change some function signature so that
third-party authors would be aware that they need to adapt their code to
new behavior, turning cases of (3) into (2).  I agree that these don't
need release notes items.

-- 
Álvaro Herrera         PostgreSQL Developer  —  https://www.EnterpriseDB.com/
"XML!" Exclaimed C++.  "What are you doing here? You're not a programming
language."
"Tell that to the people who use me," said XML.
https://burningbird.net/the-parable-of-the-languages/