Re: 7.3 failure on platypus

On Thu, Dec 15, 2005 at 12:50:44AM -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
> Mark Kirkwood <markir(at)paradise(dot)net(dot)nz> writes:
> > I don't know if this is yet another one, but happened to rebuild 7.3.12
> > on a FreeBSD 6.0 box today and I notice that it fails float8 regression
> > test (geometry does too but that is marked as ignorable).
>
> 7.3 is too old to know that freebsd beyond 4.x doesn't suffer from the
> float8-small-is-zero syndrome.
>
> This is only a one-line change in resultmap, so I patched it (please
> check that it works now!). In general, though, this is just another
> data point in support of my previous opinion that trying to keep old
> branches up-to-date with platforms that are moving targets isn't a very
> sane goal. Why would someone be using an old database on a current
> kernel?

Well, you could make the argument that switching OSes is a lot less
involved than switching PostgreSQL versions, especially since a
dump/reload isn't required...

Is the work involved here actually applying the patch or is it porting
an existing patch to older versions? The later is something that newbie
hackers could do (most of the time), which would be both a good way to
get feet wet and reduce the load on folks such as yourself.
--
Jim C. Nasby, Sr. Engineering Consultant jnasby(at)pervasive(dot)com
Pervasive Software http://pervasive.com work: 512-231-6117
vcard: http://jim.nasby.net/pervasive.vcf cell: 512-569-9461