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From: Michael Banck <[email protected]>
To: Bruce Momjian <[email protected]>
Cc: Nathan Bossart <[email protected]>
Cc: PostgreSQL-development <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Reports on obsolete Postgres versions
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2024 11:12:24 +0100
Message-ID: <[email protected]> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>
References: <[email protected]>
	<20240311211204.GA1786481@nathanxps13>
	<[email protected]>

Hi,

On Mon, Mar 11, 2024 at 05:17:13PM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 11, 2024 at 04:12:04PM -0500, Nathan Bossart wrote:
> > On Mon, Mar 11, 2024 at 04:37:49PM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > > 	https://www.postgresql.org/support/versioning/
> > > 
> > > This web page should correct the idea that "upgrades are more risky than
> > > staying with existing versions".  Is there more we can do?  Should we
> > > have a more consistent response for such reporters?
> > 
> > I've read that the use of the term "minor release" can be confusing.  While
> > the versioning page clearly describes what is eligible for a minor release,
> > not everyone reads it, so I suspect that many folks think there are new
> > features, etc. in minor releases.  I think a "minor release" of Postgres is
> > more similar to what other projects would call a "patch version."
> 
> Well, we do say:
> 
> 	While upgrading will always contain some level of risk, PostgreSQL
> 	minor releases fix only frequently-encountered bugs, security issues,
> 	and data corruption problems to reduce the risk associated with
> 	upgrading. For minor releases, the community considers not upgrading to
> 	be riskier than upgrading. 
> 
> but that is far down the page.  Do we need to improve this?

I liked the statement from Laurenz a while ago on his blog
(paraphrased): "Upgrading to the latest patch release does not require
application testing or recertification". I am not sure we want to put
that into the official page (or maybe tone down/qualify it a bit), but I
think a lot of users stay on older minor versions because they dread
their internal testing policies.

The other thing that could maybe be made a bit better is the fantastic
patch release schedule, which however is buried in the "developer
roadmap". I can see how this was useful years ago, but I think this page
should be moved to the end-user part of the website, and maybe (also)
integrated into the support/versioning page?


Michael

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