[postgis-devel] Proposal to drop support for PostgreSQL 8.3 in PostGIS 2.0

[Paragon Corporation]

Mike,

On 14 October 2010 11:15, strk <strk at keybit.net> wrote:
>>  But still I think it's great for people running old software to be 
>>  able to take a look of what postgis can do for them.

> The same people running an old and stable postgres probably want a old and
stable PostGIS. The people wanting newer features in PostGIS are probably
the same wanting to newer features in postgres. I think > that the old-camp
and new-camp of people couple their versions of postgres and PostGIS. (Just
a guess.)

> I'd expect to see a few more releases of 1.5.x for anyone wanting to
maintain older databases with the latest bug fixes (if any). Support for 8.3
ends in just over two years from now.

> http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/PostgreSQL_Release_Support_Policy


Couldn't have said it better myself.  Remember this is PostGIS 2.0.  

A) There are going to be lots of breaking changes - if you are afraid of
moving from 8.3 to 9.0 (which frankly there are really mostly enhancements),
then you aren't going to jump to 2.0.
B) You are going to have to do a dump and restore (no minor upgrade).  If I
have a huge database which one of our clients does -- we are going to
upgrade our PostgreSQL too -- rather than suffer 2 terabyte restores.

C)  We are going to have to support PostGIS 1.5 probably for at least
another 2-3 years (and that will include 8.3 of course).  Do you really want
to support PostgreSQL 8.3 on 2.0 for another 3 years?  I'm not concerned
just about now
But the future length of time we have to keep supporting these things

D) Besides something has got to nudge Strk to get off that 8.3 he is on.
Think about him :)

I just want us to make the decision now before we start making real breaking
changes.  That way we can think about those with that in mind and way our
options of what we can safely change and not.

So here again is the feature matrix of what we gain by not having to support
PostgreSQL 8.3 on 2.0

http://www.postgresql.org/about/featurematrix.html

Kevin and Paul -- you've been awfully quiet -- do you have some opinions on
the matter?

Thanks,
Regina