Re: [HACKERS] Supporting huge pages on Windows

On Mon, Jan 22, 2018 at 12:13 AM, Andrew Dunstan <
andrew(dot)dunstan(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> wrote:

>
>
> On 01/21/2018 01:02 PM, Andres Freund wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > On 2018-01-21 13:42:13 +0200, Magnus Hagander wrote:
> >> To add some more notes on this. Again, the API appears in Vista/2003.
> >> Windows Vista went EOL (out of extended support even) in April 2017,
> >> Windows 2003 did so in July 2015. Those are the versions that it's *in*
> --
> >> obviously the versions without it are even older.
> >>
> >> Our binaries only support Windows 2008 and up (at least the ones by EDB,
> >> which are the ones that have a supported-version matrix documented on
> our
> >> site).
> >>
> >> We have traditionally supported older versions of Windows as long as
> people
> >> build from source. But perhaps I'm way overreading that and we should
> just
> >> bite the bullet, commit this patch, and declare those platforms as
> >> completely dead by PostgreSQL 11?
> > Yea, I think it's beyond time that we declare some old windows versions
> > dead. There's enough weird behaviour in supported versions of windows
> > (especially its socket API) that I really don't want to support more
> > than necessary. And supporting versions that've been out of date for a
> > while seems more than unnecessary.
> >
>
>
> I'll be quite happy to retire the XP machine running brolga, currawong
> and frogmouth, if that's the consensus. XP is now long out of support.
> OTOH I have personal experience of it running in many potentially
> critical situations, still (hospitals, for example).

But do they really run PostgreSQL 11 (or 10..) on that? In my experience
they usually run an old business application on it only. That is a problem
in itself of course, but that is not our problem in this case :)

> I can, if people
> want, keep the machine running just building the back branches.
>

That's what I suggest we do. Removing the builds of back branches would be
the equivalent of de-supporting it on a still supported branch, and I don't
like that idea. But removing the master branch means we desupport in 11,
which I think is the right thing to do.

> I should probably look at setting up a modern 32-bit replacement (say
> Windows 10 Pro-32).
>

Unless we want to desupport 32-bit Windows completely. But unless we have
an actual reason to do so, I think we shouldn't. So yeah if you can get a
box like that up and running, that'd be much welcome.

--
Magnus Hagander
Me: https://www.hagander.net/ <http://www.hagander.net/>
Work: https://www.redpill-linpro.com/ <http://www.redpill-linpro.com/>