Re: Package version in PG_VERSION and version()

Christoph Berg <christoph.berg@credativ.de> writes:
> Re: Tom Lane 2018-01-17 <15537.1516200157@sss.pgh.pa.us>
>> IMO there's not really any evidence that we need an additional mechanism
>> in this space.  I don't see any way to get that evidence unless some
>> packager tries to use the existing mechanism and hits insurmountable
>> problems.

> The problem is that the problems will likely not be in my/our/Debian's
> realm, but in anything that uses our packages downstream. E.g. the
> "official" Docker images are using our packages. There is no way to
> test that external stuff without actually publishing the packages for
> production consumption.

Yeah, but the same argument could be made against the variant
you're proposing.  In theory, people could have written arbitrarily
brittle checks of version numbers/strings.  I'm not exactly convinced
that it's your (or our) problem if they did.

            regards, tom lane