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

[Regina Obe]

>> It would also solve the issue we have that PostgreSQL 9.4 2.4 upgrading to PostgreSQL 9.6 2.4 is missing all the good stuff like true KNN and some parallel safe stuff we put in.

> No, this is untrue. The KNN and parallel stuff requires *scripts* rebuild and reload, so has nothign to do with the library/module.

> --strk;

I beg to differ again.

If a user has PostgreSQL 9.4 2.4 installed and they migrate to PostgreSQL 9.6 2.4

When they go to do 

ALTER EXTENSION postgis UPDATE;

Nothing would happen.  It would say they are already current.  Even your favorite old-fashioned we have in place will not catch that.


However if they were coming from say 

PostgreSQL 9.4 2.1  before we introduced all this KNN stuff and Parallel stuff that 9.4 can't use anyway -- but we let it pass (oh you can't support that lets not give you that).

ALTER EXTENSION postgis UPDATE;

Would run the bits we said you need to run to move from 2.1 to 2.4  which would be adding in the KNN logic, dropping and recreating aggs that need to be.

Sure you can argue we can add that in the future, but there is no way when we call a script 2.4.0 that ALTER EXTENSION postgis UPDATE would try to do anything.


Sure we could add another function and instruct users.

Oh and if ALTER EXTENSION postgis UPDATE says you need to do nothing, don't believe it.

Run

SELECT postgis_full_version();

Make sense of our gobbly gook


If you see a message that something to the effect yaddda yadda yadda, then run this

.sql script  which will update the function to update your code.

And then you are good.


How much freaking stuff do you expect people to do.
People are already struggling to type the words:


ALTER EXTENSION postgis UPDATE;


It's hard for both us and them.  Us to try to account for all the different versions of PostgreSQL you could have upgraded from and hard for them to make sense of what you are asking them to do.

You know how freaking hard it is to explain to users in training.  Oh that KNN stuff we talked about that is new in PostGIS 2.2., well forget about it if you are running PostgreSQL 9.4 or lower.

And if you hmm upgraded in the past some time using pg_ugrade, you don't get it either.  You need to fuck with your install or do a pg_dump / pg_restore.


Thanks,
Regina