Re: EOL for 8.2 (was Re: Formatting Curmudgeons WAS: MMAP Buffers)

On Thu, Apr 21, 2011 at 5:59 PM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> [ man, this thread has totally outlived its title, could we change that?
>  I'll start with this subtopic ]
>
> Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
>> In fact, I've been wondering if we shouldn't consider extending the
>> support window for 8.2 past the currently-planned December 2011.
>> There seem to be quite a lot of people running that release precisely
>> because the casting changes in 8.3 were so painful, and I think the
>> incremental effort on our part to extend support for another year
>> would be reasonably small.  I guess the brunt of the work would
>> actually fall on the packagers.  It looks like we've done 5 point
>> releases of 8.2.x in the last year, so presumably if we did decide to
>> extend the EOL date by a year or so that's about how much incremental
>> effort would be needed.
>
> I agree that the incremental effort would not be so large, but what
> makes you think that the situation will change given another year?
> My expectation is that'd just mean people will do nothing about
> migrating for a year longer.
>
> More generally: it took a lot of argument to establish the current EOL
> policy, and bending it the first time anyone feels any actual pain
> will pretty much destroy the whole concept.

It would also make at least one packager very unhappy as the 8.2
Windows build is by far the hardest and most time consuming to do and
I happen to know he's been counting the days until it goes.

More generally, keeping it for longer means we might end up supporting
6 major releases at once. That may not be so much work on a day to day
basis, but it adds up to a lot at release times, which was one of the
reasons why we agreed on the 5 year support window.

--
Dave Page
Blog: http://pgsnake.blogspot.com
Twitter: @pgsnake

EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company