Re: RPMS for 7.3 beta.

Lamar Owen <lamar(dot)owen(at)wgcr(dot)org> writes:
> On Tuesday 17 September 2002 11:51 pm, Tom Lane wrote:
>> The bald fact of the matter is that we are still a good ways away from
>> the point where we might be willing to freeze the system catalogs.

> Not talking about a freeze. Talking about separation of system/feature
> metadata from user metadata that wouldn't change in the upgrade anyway --

But the system catalogs *store* that metadata. Whether the user's
metadata is changing or not in a high-level sense doesn't prove much
about what's happening to its low-level representation.

>> PG
>> is evolving and improving by a substantial amount with every release,
>> and the implication of that is that there *will* be some upgrade pain.

> Why is it a given conclusion? It should not be axiomatic that 'there *will*
> be upgrade pain if we improve our features.' That's fatalistic.

I prefer "realistic" :-). It is probably true that with an adequate
amount of effort directed towards upgrade issues we could make upgrading
less painful than it's usually been for PG. (I didn't say "zero pain",
mind you, only "less pain".) But where is that effort going to come
from? None of the key developers care to spend their time that way;
all of us have other issues that we find more interesting/compelling/fun.
Unless someone of key-developer caliber comes along who *likes* spending
time on upgrade issues, it's not going to get better. Sorry to be the
bearer of bad news, but that's reality as I see it.

regards, tom lane