8.4 release planning (was Re: [COMMITTERS] pgsql: Automatic view update rules)

Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> writes:
> Robert Haas wrote:
>> Yeah... I'm not sure what to do about that, but as Tom pointed out,
>> it has the disadvantage that all of these massive changes are getting
>> put into the tree just before we start beta.

> Well, it is less a problem than in previous releases, so things are
> getting better.

Are they? If we stay in commitfest mode until every single thing on the
list has been dealt with, I am not sure this release cycle will be any
shorter than 8.3's was.

We said back at the beginning that

>> The hope here is that we will not have enormous, previously unreviewed
>> patches landing on us at the end of October --- if that happens, we'll
>> be back in the same position we were in at 8.3 feature freeze. Although
>> this schedule allows for the final commit fest to take a good deal of
>> time, we'll reserve the right to reject patches that are too large to be
>> reviewed in a timely fashion. We want to encourage people to do
>> development of large features in an incremental fashion, with a new
>> increment landing during each commit fest.

and I'm beginning to think that we need to invoke that provision.
Particularly with regard to hot standby, which by any sane reading was
not close to being committable on 1 November (a fortiori from the fact
that it's *still* not committable despite large amounts of later work).
I'm also feeling that we are not in a position to commit SE-Postgres in
a timely fashion; which is not KaiGai-san's fault, rather that of the
community which has taken nearly zero interest in that patch.

If we want to ensure that 8.5 development opens soon, what we have to do
is reject those two patches, revert updatable views, and finish up the
other stuff (which is all small and could likely be dealt with in a week
or two). That puts us in position to go beta by perhaps mid-February
with release perhaps on May 1. If we don't, I hereby predict that 8.4
release will not happen before September. Trying to deal with those
late, large features will add *at least* one more month to commitfest
and *at least* one more month to beta (you think they'll be bug-free?).

As our new president has been reminding us, it's time to start making
hard choices.

regards, tom lane