8.3 Release Schedule

I have been thinking about where we are in the release process for 8.3.

I know we hoped for a July beta, but soon after the 8.3 feature freeze
it was clear that we weren't going to make that date. I am sure some
people are frustrated we are not closer to beta.

Looking at where we are now, there are only two alternatives --- keep
pressing on, or discard patches to force an earlier beta. The idea of
discarding patches is bad for two reasons:

1) It is not fair to the patch submitters who completed their
work by the feature freeze.
2) We are going to be no better at dealing with these patches
during 8.4 than we are now.

While someone could make the case that we need to disregard #1 for the
good of the community release, #2 is really a firm issue we can't
ignore. So, unless we can say we don't want the functionality in the
pending patches we have to just keep moving forward.

All outstanding patches are probably things we want so there is no value
to pushing them to 8.4. In fact, some of these we pushed from 8.2 to
8.3, and as you can see, they got little major review during the 8.3
development cycle, so now is the time to give them the attention they
need.

On the patch status page:

http://developer.postgresql.org/index.php/Todo:PatchStatus

We have three major patches:

* HOT
* Group Item Tuples
* Text Search

With six weeks left until the start of September, I think we can assume
four weeks to focus on these three big patches, then another few weeks
to apply the more minor patches and resolve all outstanding issues
before we enter beta.

The good news is that 8.3 is going to be a blockbuster release. 8.2 was
the polishing of existing features so it is good 8.3 is going to be a
_must-upgrade_ release for most users.

In fact, one of the reasons that it is taking so long to get to beta is
that thanks to development from EnterpriseDB and others we are getting
8.4 and 8.5 features in 8.3. But those features are coming from people
who don't have a history of developing complex patches for PostgreSQL so
we have to be extra-careful in review. Assuming the review goes well,
we can assume that less review will be required for future patches from
these developers so hopefully 8.4 will be quicker.

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> http://momjian.us
EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com

+ If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +