Neil Conway <neilc@samurai.com> writes:
> Tom Lane wrote:
>> The "harm" is the developer time spent on doing so. Releasing back
>> versions takes nontrivial effort (witness what it took to get 7.3.6
>> out the door :-().
> True; that said, much of this overhead is (IMHO) avoidable. There
> should be little or no manual intervention needed in the release
> process, so if the code in the REL7_1_STABLE branch is 'release
> quality', there shouldn't be that much work needed to issue an
> additional release.
That's the theory, but reality is different. Sure, the bits in CVS are
static, but the environment in which the release package gets built
isn't so static. (I believe that's what bit us for 7.3.6.) Outfits
that maintain back versions spend large amounts of money and manpower
on making sure they can reproduce old build environments. We don't have
that kind of infrastructure.
Basically my feeling about this is that PGDG is a *development*
community, and that's what we ought to focus our effort on doing. There
are other groups (Red Hat, Mammoth, possibly SRA) that are better suited
to handle maintenance of old versions. And yes, they charge money for
what they do. That's because there are very real costs involved.
I don't want to see PGDG putting our limited developer manpower into it.
regards, tom lane