From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>
cc: Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net>,
        Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@alvh.no-ip.org>,
        PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>,
        Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>
Subject: Re: pg_dump versus ancient server versions
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Comments: In-reply-to Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>
	message dated "Mon, 25 Oct 2021 10:40:29 -0400"
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Date: Mon, 25 Oct 2021 11:00:42 -0400
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Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> writes:
> On Mon, Oct 25, 2021 at 10:23 AM Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>> Roughly speaking, I think the policy should be "no feature bug fixes,
>> not even security fixes, for EOL'd branches; only fixes that are
>> minimally necessary to make it build on newer platforms".  And
>> I want to have a sunset provision even for that.  Fixing every branch
>> forevermore doesn't scale.

> Sure, but you can ameliorate that a lot by just saying it's something
> people have the *option* to do, not something anybody is *expected* to
> do. I agree it's best if we continue to discourage back-patching bug
> fixes into supported branches, but I also think we don't need to be
> too stringent about this.

Actually, I think we do.  If I want to test against 7.4, ISTM I want
to test against the last released 7.4 version, not something with
arbitrary later changes.  Otherwise, what exactly is the point?

>> In principle we might just need to add resurrected branches back to
>> the branches_to_build list.  Given my view of what the back-patching
>> policy ought to be, a new build in an old branch might only be
>> required a couple of times a year, which would not be an undue
>> investment of buildfarm resources.

> I suppose it would be useful if we had the ability to do new runs only
> when the source code has changed...

Uh, don't we have that already?  I know you can configure a buildfarm
animal to force a run at least every-so-often, but it's not required,
and I don't think it's even the default.

			regards, tom lane