To: Jan Wieck <JanWieck@Yahoo.com>
Cc: Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>,
	PostgreSQL Development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: Release cycle length 
In-reply-to: <3FBB7F20.8050005@Yahoo.com> 
References: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0311180038310.639-100000@peter.localdomain>
	<20031117202346.M731@ganymede.hub.org> <3FBB7F20.8050005@Yahoo.com>
Comments: In-reply-to Jan Wieck <JanWieck@Yahoo.com>
	message dated "Wed, 19 Nov 2003 09:33:04 -0500"
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 15:19:38 -0500
Message-ID: <6400.1069359578@sss.pgh.pa.us>
From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>

Jan Wieck <JanWieck@Yahoo.com> writes:
> On Tue, 18 Nov 2003, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
>> The time from release 7.3 to release 7.4 was 355 days, an all-time high.
>> We really need to shorten that.

> I don't see much of a point for a shorter release cycle as long as we 
> don't get rid of the initdb requirement for releases that don't change 
> the system catalog structure. All we gain from that is spreading out the 
> number of different versions used in production.

Yeah, I think the main issue in all this is that for real production
sites, upgrading Postgres across major releases is *painful*.  We have
to find a solution to that before it makes sense to speed up the
major-release cycle.

By the same token, I'm not sure that there's much of a market for
"development" releases --- people who find a 7.3->7.4 upgrade painful
aren't going to want to add additional upgrades to incompatible
intermediate states.  If we could fix that, there'd be more interest.

			regards, tom lane