From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: =?utf-8?Q?=C3=81lvaro?= Herrera <alvherre@kurilemu.de>
cc: Michael Banck <mbanck@gmx.net>, Thomas Munro <thomas.munro@gmail.com>,
        PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: Time to drop RADIUS support?
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Comments: In-reply-to =?utf-8?Q?=C3=81lvaro?= Herrera <alvherre@kurilemu.de>
	message dated "Fri, 23 Jan 2026 15:53:13 +0100"
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Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2026 11:30:07 -0500
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=?utf-8?Q?=C3=81lvaro?= Herrera <alvherre@kurilemu.de> writes:
> Would it work to add a WARNING (or something) to all back branches to
> ask users to write here, so that we can confirm in the next few months
> whether the protocol is completely unused or not?  If we do find users,
> then we could try to think of workarounds[*], but otherwise we'd just
> remove it for pg19 (or pg20 at the latest) and not waste any more time
> on it.

I don't think that'd prove a lot.  Affected users (if any) wouldn't
necessarily be quick to adopt the latest minor releases.  They're
probably not even up-to-date on their RADIUS server, or they'd have
noticed it spewing complaints.

> I don't think removing it entirely from all back branches is a good
> idea, without first making sure that there are no users.

Agreed, we can't pull it from the back branches.  But I'm in favor of
pulling it from HEAD if we document how to use PAM-based RADIUS
instead.  I agree with Thomas' argument that the cost-benefit ratio
of fixing our implementation would be poor.

			regards, tom lane