[postgis-devel] PSC Vote: Change PostGIS library name to drop the minor

[Stephen Frost]

Mark, all,

* Mark Cave-Ayland (mark.cave-ayland at ilande.co.uk) wrote:
> On 28/08/17 16:47, Regina Obe wrote:
> > I'd really like to hear from packagers what they think of this idea, as this
> > is being done mostly for them so they don't have to deal with users
> > constantly complaining about how they can't do pg_upgrade.
> 
> I'm a -1 for this.  I agree with strk that this is definitely the wrong
> time to be doing this just before a release, and given that this problem
> has always existed rushing into a decision now makes little sense.
> 
> The different version number is there for a reason to indicate that the
> behaviour between versions will have changed, and while I understand
> that upgrading is often tricky I don't believe this is the right solution.

This is the real crux of it for me, at least.  If there are behaviour
changes between these minor versions (that aren't clear bug fixes) then
we really shouldn't be just automatically upgrading people to the later
version (which is what this change implies would happen).

> It strikes me the real issue is that something is missing from the
> upgrade process (whether that is PostGIS and/or PostgreSQL) and the
> focus on solving the issue should be placed there, and not on removing
> important version information from the generated libraries.

I'm a bit on the fence regarding this.  I'm very much in favor of making
things easier when it comes to the upgrade process, but what I think
that requires is a firm stance that new versions *don't* change
behaviour except in cases of clear bug fixes.  If behaviour changes are
going to be happening in existing functionality then we simply can't
just upgrade users to the new version, we need to continue to have a
distinction between these versions and that implies a slightly more
painful upgrade process.

Perhaps we can improve the upgrade process by warning users ahead of
time in a nicer way than the error pg_upgrade throws today, but I'm not
sure what that would really look like.

Thanks!

Stephen
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