Re: 8.2 beta blockers

> -----Original Message-----
> From: pgsql-hackers-owner(at)postgresql(dot)org
> Yeah, I know, which is why I don't find it absolutely critical that
> this make it to beta1. But one of the concerns mentioned in
> the thread
> is that the changes might break things for older AIX versions. If we
> get it into beta1, we have a better chance of finding out
> before release
> whether there are any issues with AIX versions that aren't represented
> in buildfarm.
>
As a backdoor, we can leave in the code to compile static for the old
versions, but I am not sure its worth it.

As a side note, I tried to build CVS on an AIX 4.1 box, and it already
has issues. The TOC is too large for ld, amongst others.

I had tried to get our older box onto the buildfarm, but the version of
Perl on that box was too ancient to run the buildfarm code, and I didn't
think people would care too much about it missing, since its such an old
version anyway. Then I discovered the issues with trying to build by
hand, and gave up at that point.

I think we should make our cut-off version as 4.3. This is the first to
support run time linking, so the changes we are talking about for today
will work on that version. It came out in October 97 and was EOL'd Dec
2001.

If someone really wants to run on something older than a 9 year old OS,
that was EOL'd almost 5 years ago. I think they should do so at their
peril, and its not up to us to go out of our way to support them.

I don't think we will be making an AIX uesrs sad by adding support for
dynamic linking, but breaking old versions of the OS.

Thanks,
-rocco