From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>
Cc: David G. Johnston <david.g.johnston@gmail.com>
Cc: PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: pg_dump versus ancient server versions
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 2021 13:09:43 -0400
Message-ID: <4049941.1635181783@sss.pgh.pa.us> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20211025165620.all2726jlr7i2pid@alap3.anarazel.de>
References: <2923349.1634942313@sss.pgh.pa.us>
<CAKFQuwbqPto2ASa2vpXNWApanfzaAqBz1+wEyiW0G0gqyKjw0A@mail.gmail.com>
<2979833.1634945425@sss.pgh.pa.us>
<20211025165620.all2726jlr7i2pid@alap3.anarazel.de>
Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de> writes:
> On 2021-10-22 19:30:25 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
>> Yeah. I checked into when it was that we dropped pre-8.0 support
>> from pg_dump, and the answer is just about five years ago (64f3524e2).
>> So moving the bar forward by five releases isn't at all out of line.
>> 8.4 would be eight years past EOL by the time v15 comes out.
> I'd really like us to adopt a "default" policy on this. I think it's a waste
> to spend time every few years arguing what exact versions to drop. I'd much
> rather say that, unless there are concrete reasons to deviate from that, we
> provide pg_dump compatibility for 5+3 releases, pg_upgrade for 5+1, and psql
> for 5 releases or something like that.
I agree with considering something like that to be the minimum support
policy, but the actual changes need a bit more care. For example, when
we last did this, the technical need was just to drop pre-7.4 versions,
but we chose to make the cutoff 8.0 on the grounds that that was more
understandable to users [1]. In the same way, I'm thinking of moving the
cutoff to 9.0 now, although 8.4 would be sufficient from a technical
standpoint.
OTOH, in the new world of one-part major versions, it's less clear that
there will be obvious division points for future cutoff changes. Maybe
versions-divisible-by-five would work? Or versions divisible by ten,
but experience so far suggests that we'll want to move the cutoff more
often than once every ten years.
regards, tom lane
[1] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/2661.1475849167%40sss.pgh.pa.us
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Cc: tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us, andres@anarazel.de, david.g.johnston@gmail.com, pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org
Subject: Re: pg_dump versus ancient server versions
In-Reply-To: <4049941.1635181783@sss.pgh.pa.us>
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