getting to beta

A quick review of the open items list suggests that we have three main
areas that need attention before we can declare ourselves ready for
beta.

In no particular order:

1. There are a bunch of small, outstanding SSI patches.
2. Bugs - plural - related to pg_upgrade & typed tables.
3. Assorted collation issues.

There are a couple of smaller items, too, but those are the big ones.
Per previous discussion, the viable dates for code freeze for beta1
appear to be April 14th and April 28th. If we want to hit the earlier
of those dates, which in my opinion would be a great goal to have,
then we need to get all of the above issues resolved in the next 8
days, and I think we're going to need to kick it up a notch if we want
that to happen.

Most urgently, I believe we need a bit more committer bandwidth. I
believe that I could tackle either the SSI patches or the pg_upgrade &
typed tables issue, or I could try to make a dent in the collation
stuff, but I don't think I can cover two of those areas and I
definitely can't cover all three. Especially in the area of SSI, and
to some extent as regards typed tables, the patches are written, but
we have to get them reviewed and committed. Is anyone available to
help with this?

There are also a few issues where we need a patch and don't have one.
In those cases the patches could be written by either a committer or a
non-committer, but we need to make sure we know who is doing it so
that everything gets covered. In particular:

- SSI needs patch for the issue "SSI: three different HTABs contend
for shared memory in a free-for-all"
- typed tables needs a patch to allow an existing table to be made
into a typed table, and pg_dump --binary-upgrade needs to be made to
use that feature
- the open collation issues all lack any associated code (but maybe
Tom is planning to do this himself?)

The other minor issues are:

- do latches have memory ordering problems? I think the consensus is
that they work OK the way we're using them right now, so maybe we can
just drop this item, unless someone wants to pontificate further on
it.
- sync rep & smart shutdown - someone needs to review & apply Fujii
Masao's proposed patch
- generate_series boundary issue - I think this isn't a new regression
so it's probably not a blocker for beta1, but we might still want to
try to fix it. I seem to remember thinking that the prototype patch
looked like it needed pretty significant cleanup, but I haven't looked
at it in a while so I might be all wet.

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company