[postgis-users] [postgis-devel] PSC Vote to officially drop support for PostgreSQL 8.3 in PostGIS 2.0
Ben Madin
lists at remoteinformation.com.au
Fri Apr 22 07:14:41 PDT 2011
another 2c (AUS) worth - but that's 2.1 US cents at the moment!
Another strictly user, but I'll go along with Brent's sentiment on this - we are lucky that our servers are all FreeBSD - meaning that we are now running the 9.0.3 / 1.5.2 combination straight out of ports. Upgrades (just went from 8.3 to 9.0) have gone smoothly. I wouldn't say we are early adopters, but our upgrade decisions are now driven by reducing providing backward compatibility... so I would be comfortable with the suggestion of not trying to provide backward compatibility to everyone.
I would however suggest that although I understand Regina's limit of 3, I think maintaining 8.4 support may have to exist beyond the release of PG9.2, as the move from 8.4 -> 9 is probably far more difficult that 8.3 -> 8.4.
cheers
Ben
On 22/04/2011, at 10:59 AM, Stephen Woodbridge wrote:
> Brent,
>
> Well said! I was trying to frame this same sediment.
>
> Devs,
>
> I'm on the mapserver PSC and while I am a strong advocate for user issues and release compatibility, I will be one of the first to say if a major release is making things faster, better, decreasing maintenance at the cost of breaking backwards compatibility, then we should do that. The incentive for users to upgrade is based on there being lots of better, faster, quality features that they do not have on the old releases.
>
> Given what I have heard so far, I have old versions I can use if I have to, and there seems to be lots of goodness to offset the pain of upgrading. So 2.0 is the time to do this. Waiting until 3.0 will probably not a good idea.
>
> Thanks for everyone time and efforts on building such a great product!
>
> -Steve
>
> On 4/21/2011 9:35 PM, pcreso at pcreso.com wrote:
>> 02c worth strictly from a user's perspective:
>>
>> New users will generally start with current latest versions. So they
>> should be fine.
>>
>> Old users who have difficulty upgrading. (Oft times me :-) my call. If I
>> need Postgis to work with 8.3, I use v1.5, if I need later Postgis
>> functionailty, I upgrade. I still have a choice, as long as the older
>> versions are available, even if they are no longer officially supported.
>>
>> The rate of development of Postgis & Postgres is great. I'd sooner see
>> the developers free to develop, making the most of their valuable &
>> appreciated time, rather than spending time just keeping older Postgres
>> versions supported.
>>
>> Thanks everyone!
>>
>> Brent Wood
>>
>> --- On *Fri, 4/22/11, Paragon Corporation /<lr at pcorp.us>/* wrote:
>>
>>
>> From: Paragon Corporation <lr at pcorp.us>
>> Subject: Re: [postgis-users] [postgis-devel] PSC Vote to officially
>> drop support for PostgreSQL 8.3 in PostGIS 2.0
>> To: "'PostGIS Development Discussion'"
>> <postgis-devel at postgis.refractions.net>
>> Cc: "'PostGIS Users Discussion'" <postgis-users at postgis.refractions.net>
>> Date: Friday, April 22, 2011, 12:57 PM
>>
>>
>> Mark,
>> Agree with Paul -- we did say all PSC should at least feel
>> comfortable with
>> our position and be able to defend it. Though probably something we
>> need to
>> clarify in our voting rules.
>>
>> I've cc'd the regular users group since I feel they would be most
>> affected
>> by this decision and would like to hear their opinions on it.
>>
>> First let's keep things in perspective. We are talking about not having
>> support for PostgreSQL 8.3 for PostGIS 2.0. We will still do our
>> duty and
>> support PostgreSQL 8.3 on PostGIS 1.3-1.5 and if we don't have to worry
>> about also supporting it on 2.0, we'll have many more cycles to support
>> issues that arise in 1.3-1.5.
>>
>>
>> More food for thought -
>> From all the signals I have seen, I just feel trying to support
>> PostgreSQL
>> 8.3 on PostGIS 2.0 is a really bad idea.
>>
>> I will add this. It's not just the testing, it’s the fact that requiring
>> our 2.0 code work on PostgreSQL 8.3 is going to slow our release as all
>> PostGIS developers will need to limit their feature set to work on
>> 8.3 and
>> avoid new features that will make programming easier and more
>> efficient. We
>> have much more plpgsql code in PostGIS 2.0, than we have ever had in
>> prior
>> versions, which makes the task much more difficult.
>>
>> From what I can gather most distros package just one version of
>> PostGIS with
>> each version of PostgreSQL if they package PostGIS at all. I just
>> helped a
>> client port their database to an ubuntu server on a different host
>> and the
>> stable on Ubuntu 10 is 8.4 with PostGIS 1.4. In fact even the backports
>> that have PostgreSQL 9.0, I can't find 1.5 so had to compile
>> ourselves to
>> get 1.5. This is not something most users new to PostgreSQL or
>> PostGIS will
>> be willing to do. So the reality is if they want to stay stable
>> they'll be
>> using 8.2 with 1.4. Similar story with centos. Yum rpms packages
>> just one
>> version of PostGIS with 8.4 and 9.0. For 9.0 it's 1.5.
>>
>> If we don't make release before the PostgreSQL 9.1 cut (which I really
>> fear given all we need to test and finish), we are going to have a
>> lot of
>> new users starting off their PostGIS experience on 1.5 and it's
>> going to be
>> next to impossible to get them to upgrade.
>>
>> If you are at all concerned about new users, you need to take this into
>> consideration. The ratio of new users is exponential so that I
>> suspect in
>> a year's time if it is not the case already we will have a lot more new
>> users with less than 1 years experience with PostGIS / PostgreSQL
>> than we
>> have users with more than 1 years experience.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Regina
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: postgis-devel-bounces at postgis.refractions.net
>> </mc/compose?to=postgis-devel-bounces at postgis.refractions.net>
>> [mailto:postgis-devel-bounces at postgis.refractions.net
>> </mc/compose?to=postgis-devel-bounces at postgis.refractions.net>] On
>> Behalf Of Paul
>> Ramsey
>> Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2011 6:54 PM
>> To: PostGIS Development Discussion
>> Subject: Re: [postgis-devel] PSC Vote to officially drop support for
>> PostgreSQL 8.3 in PostGIS 2.0
>>
>> -1 means "veto and I'll do what it takes to make my position stick".
>> So you're OK being 8.3 compatibility tester and fixer?
>>
>> P.
>>
>> On Thu, Apr 21, 2011 at 12:27 PM, Mark Cave-Ayland
>> <mark.cave-ayland at siriusit.co.uk
>> </mc/compose?to=mark.cave-ayland at siriusit.co.uk>> wrote:
>> > On 14/04/11 12:02, Paragon Corporation wrote:
>> >
>> >> I hereby call a PSC Vote to officially drop support for PostgreSQL
>> >> 8.3 in PostGIS 2.0.
>> >>
>> >> I think enough has been said on the topic that it is clear to me
>> >> PostgreSQL
>> >> 8.3 is becoming a bit of a burden to maintain for both regression
>> >> testing and as well as having to hold back on features
>> introduced in
>> >> newer versions of PostgreSQL.
>> >>
>> >> With this official drop we will then be available to take advantage
>> >> of
>> >>
>> >> 1) Window functions, CTES, variadic functions, RETURN QUERY
>> EXECUTE,
>> >> CASE in pl/pgsql, EXECUTE using, user-defined exceptions,
>> >> and a slew of other features itemized in PostgreSQL feature matrix
>> >> http://www.postgresql.org/about/featurematrix
>> >>
>> >> 2) Not have to regress test against 8.3 any longer
>> >> 3) Get rid of the stupid hack we have in place for pgxs
>> >> 4) Get rid of that conditional logic we have in place for
>> aggregation
>> >> to handle versions that don't support windowing
>> >>
>> >> This is just one step, but my more aggressive requirement which I
>> >> shall put in as a second PSC Vote, is to not support more than
>> >> 3 versions of PostgreSQL on any version of PostGIS unless there are
>> >> extenuating circumstances. More on that later.
>> >>
>> >> All PSC voters, please give your vote.
>> >
>> > I'm probably in the minority, but -1 from me.
>> >
>> >
>> > ATB,
>> >
>> > Mark.
>> >
>> > --
>> > Mark Cave-Ayland - Senior Technical Architect PostgreSQL - PostGIS
>> > Sirius Corporation plc - control through freedom
>> > http://www.siriusit.co.uk
>> > t: +44 870 608 0063
>> >
>> > Sirius Labs: http://www.siriusit.co.uk/labs
>> > _______________________________________________
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>> > http://postgis.refractions.net/mailman/listinfo/postgis-devel
>> >
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