Re: Move defaults toward ICU in 16?

On Thu, Feb 16, 2023 at 1:01 AM Jeff Davis <pgsql(at)j-davis(dot)com> wrote:
> It feels very wrong to me to explain that sort order is defined by the
> operating system on which Postgres happens to run. Saying that it's
> defined by ICU, which is part of the Unicode consotium, is much better.
> It doesn't eliminate versioning issues, of course, but I think it's a
> better explanation for users.

The fact that we can't use ICU on Windows, though, weakens this
argument a lot. In my experience, we have a lot of Windows users, and
they're not any happier with the operating system collations than
Linux users. Possibly less so.

I feel like this is a very difficult kind of change to judge. If
everyone else feels this is a win, we should go with it, and hopefully
we'll end up better off. I do feel like there are things that could go
wrong, though, between the imperfect documentation, the fact that a
substantial chunk of our users won't be able to use it because they
run Windows, and everybody having to adjust to the behavior change.

--
Robert Haas
EDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com