Message-ID: <325f2571-aea9-4427-8fbb-b24b7103483f@ardentperf.com>
Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2024 11:29:57 -0700
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Subject: Re: Reports on obsolete Postgres versions
To: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>, Robert Treat <rob@xzilla.net>
Cc: Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>, Daniel Gustafsson <daniel@yesql.se>,
 Michael Banck <mbanck@gmx.net>, Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com>,
 PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
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 <2074093.1710354080@sss.pgh.pa.us>
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From: Jeremy Schneider <schneider@ardentperf.com>
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On 3/13/24 11:21 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
> Robert Treat <rob@xzilla.net> writes:
>> On Wed, Mar 13, 2024 at 1:12 PM Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> wrote:
>>> On Wed, Mar 13, 2024 at 09:21:27AM -0700, Jeremy Schneider wrote:
>>>> In my view, the best thing would be to move toward consistently using
>>>> the word "patch" and moving away from the word "minor" for the
>>>> PostgreSQL quarterly maintenance updates.
> 
>>> I think "minor" is a better term since it contrasts with "major".  We
>>> don't actually supply patches to upgrade minor versions.
> 
>> I tend to agree with Bruce, and major/minor seems to be the more
>> common usage within the industry; iirc, debian, ubuntu, gnome, suse,
>> and mariadb all use that nomenclature; and ISTR some distro's who
>> release packaged versions of postgres with custom patches applied (ie
>> 12.4-2 for postgres 12.4 patchlevel 2).
> 
> Agreed, we would probably add confusion not reduce it if we were to
> change our longstanding nomenclature for this.


"Longstanding nomenclature"??

Before v10, the quarterly maintenance updates were unambiguously and
always called patch releases

I don't understand the line of thinking here

Bruce started this whole thread because of "an increasing number of
bug/problem reports on obsolete Postgres versions"

Across the industry the word "minor" often implies a release that will
be maintained, and I'm trying to point out that the change in v10 to
change terminology from "patch" to "minor" actually might be part of
what's responsible for the increasing number of bug reports on old patch
releases, because people don't understand that patch releases are the
way those bugfixes were already delivered.

Just taking MySQL as an example, it's clear that a "minor" like 5.7 is a
full blown release that gets separate patches from 5.6 - so I don't
understand how we're making an argument it's the opposite?

-Jeremy


-- 
http://about.me/jeremy_schneider