Re: First draft of PG 17 release notes

On Thu, May 16, 2024 at 09:09:11AM -0400, Melanie Plageman wrote:
> On Wed, May 15, 2024 at 11:48 PM Andres Freund <andres(at)anarazel(dot)de> wrote:
> >
> > On 2024-05-15 10:38:20 +0200, Alvaro Herrera wrote:
> > > I disagree with this. IMO the impact of the Sawada/Naylor change is
> > > likely to be enormous for people with large tables and large numbers of
> > > tuples to clean up (I know we've had a number of customers in this
> > > situation, I can't imagine any Postgres service provider that doesn't).
> > > The fact that maintenance_work_mem is no longer capped at 1GB is very
> > > important and I think we should mention that explicitly in the release
> > > notes, as setting it higher could make a big difference in vacuum run
> > > times.
> >
> > +many.
> >
> > We're having this debate every release. I think the ongoing reticence to note
> > performance improvements in the release notes is hurting Postgres.
> >
> > For one, performance improvements are one of the prime reason users
> > upgrade. Without them being noted anywhere more dense than the commit log,
> > it's very hard to figure out what improved for users. A halfway widely
> > applicable performance improvement is far more impactful than many of the
> > feature changes we do list in the release notes.
>
> The practical reason this matters to users is that they want to change
> their configuration or expectations in response to performance
> improvements.
>
> And also, as Jelte mentions upthread, describing performance
> improvements made each release in Postgres makes it clear that we are
> consistently improving it.
>
> > For another, it's also very frustrating for developers that focus on
> > performance. The reticence to note their work, while noting other, far
> > smaller, things in the release notes, pretty much tells us that our work isn't
> > valued.
>
> +many

Please see the email I just posted. There are three goals we have to
adjust for:

1. short release notes so they are readable
2. giving people credit for performance improvements
3. showing people Postgres cares about performance

I would like to achieve 2 & 3 without harming #1. My experience is if I
am reading a long document, and I get to a section where I start to
wonder, "Why should I care about this?", I start to skim the rest of
the document. I am particularly critical if I start to wonder, "Why
does the author _think_ I should care about this?" becasue it feels like
the author is writing for him/herself and not the audience.

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> https://momjian.us
EDB https://enterprisedb.com

Only you can decide what is important to you.