Re: 8.5 release timetable, again

Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 5:12 PM, Peter Eisentraut<peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net> wrote:
>> ... Surely it's been tested before, else it would not be in
>> the release, right?

> I would sure hope so. Testing features individually makes a whole lot
> more sense to me than testing the release as a whole. Just trying a
> bunch of random stuff and seeing if anything breaks is not a very
> productive activity.

I beg to disagree. New features have presumably been tested, in
isolation, by the original developer and reviewers. The things we tend
to miss are bad side-effects on corner cases and seemingly-unrelated
features. So "testing as a whole" is exactly what beta is for, to my
mind.

> I think there is a lot of merit (as Andrew suggests) in running a
> production application on a beta version of the database just to see
> if anything funny happens.

... but here we seem to be coming out at the same place anyway. Getting
people to put their existing apps onto a beta is very productive.
We have to encourage people to do more of that while it's still beta,
instead of waiting till .0 or .1 or later.

regards, tom lane