Re: 10.0

On Tue, Jun 14, 2016 at 3:46 PM, Jim Nasby <Jim(dot)Nasby(at)bluetreble(dot)com> wrote:
> On 6/13/16 2:12 PM, Merlin Moncure wrote:
>>
>> A) make a variant of version() that returns major/minor/bugfix as
>> separate fields with minor being set to 0 for all released versions
>> 10.0 and beyond. We could then add a NOTE to the version function and
>> other places suggesting to use that instead for 9.6.
>>
>> B) Preserve x.y.z as returned by version() and show server_version for
>> those usages only, with 'y' being always 0 for 10.0 and beyond. For
>> all other purposes (marketing/documentation/etc) that structure would
>> *not* be preserved, and we would put notes in the documentation
>> describing why the extra digit is there.
>>
>> C) Do neither A or B, and let our users discover such issues on their own.
>
>
> D) Add a version function to 10.0 that returns both parts separately.
>
> My vote is D. Parsing version() output is a wart, but coming out with a
> split output version of that in 9.6 that still has to support 3 numbers
> would also be a wart. We've lived with the parsing wart this long, so lets
> just add an explicit output version to 10.0.
>
> Any ideas on naming for such a function? version_detail()? I suppose while
> we're at this we might as well provide the compile details as well.

This seems kind of silly, because anybody who is writing code that
might have to run against an existing version of the database won't be
able to use it. The one thing that absolutely has to be cross-version
is the method of determining which version you're running against.

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