Re: Reports on obsolete Postgres versions

On Wed, Mar 13, 2024 at 3:05 PM Laurenz Albe <laurenz(dot)albe(at)cybertec(dot)at> wrote:
> I think we are pretty conservative with backpatching changes to the
> optimizer that could destabilize existing plans.

We have gotten better about that, which is good.

> I feel quite strongly that we should not use overly conservative language
> there. If people feel that they have to test their applications for new
> minor releases, the only effect will be that they won't install minor releases.
> Installing a minor release should be as routine as the operating system
> patches that many companies apply automatically during weekend maintenance
> windows. They can also introduce bugs, and everybody knows and accepts that.

I don't agree with this. If we tell people that they don't need to
test their applications after an upgrade, I do not think that the
result will be that they skip the testing and everything works
perfectly. I think that the result will be that we lose all
credibility. Nobody who has been working on computers for longer than
a week is going to believe that a software upgrade can't break
anything, and someone whose entire business depends on things not
breaking is going to want to validate that they haven't. And they're
not wrong to think that way, either.

I think that whatever we say here should focus on what we try to do or
guarantee, not on what actions we think users ought to take, never
mind must take. We can say that we try to avoid making any changes
upon which an application might be relying -- but there surely is some
weasel-wording there, because we have made such changes before in the
name of security, and sometimes to fix bugs, and we will likely to do
so again in the future. But it's not for us to decide how much testing
is warranted. It's the user's system, not ours.

In the end, while I certainly don't mind improving the web page, I
think that a lot of what we're seeing here probably has to do with the
growing popularity and success of PostgreSQL. If you have more people
using your software, you're also going to have more people using
out-of-date versions of your software.

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