Michael Fuhr <mike@fuhr.org> writes:
> If the catalog versions match then you shouldn't need to do an
> initdb; if they're different then you will. Making a full dump
> anyway before upgrading might be prudent just in case, however.
> The most recent catalog version change appears to have been committed
> on 2004/11/05. I think 8.0.0beta4 was the next version after that,
> so if you're running 8.0.0beta4 or later then I wouldn't expect an
> initdb to be required to move to 8.0.0. But don't hold me to that....
This information is easy to discern from the cvsweb page for
catversion.h:
http://developer.postgresql.org/cvsweb.cgi/pgsql/src/include/catalog/catversion.h
which shows that versions older than beta5 will require an initdb.
(The apparent update on 12/31 was just to change the copyright-date
comment.)
regards, tom lane