> I was thinking of something much simpler where Jan would create an ARC
> patch against 7.4.X and have it either in /contrib for 7.4.X or on our
> ftp servers, or on a web site. I could create a mechanism so SELECT
> version() would display Jan's add-on.
I think you guys just need to learn to become comfortable with being
hard-nosed about this. Just Do Not Care about people who "want" ARC
right this second. Do you see them calling up Oracle and saying please
backport the new stuff from 11i-devel so we can use it now please?
You learn after a long while in the software industry that if left to
themselves the users will make _endless_ demands and they think that
they NEED everything NOW. Of course in reality, they don't NEED it NOW
- they can wait. And even if they did get it now, then it's buggy and
then they complain even louder. You cannot win. The arguments about
things "getting more testing" in production is nonsense - we are a major
database server - you cannot have users doing the testing for us!!!!
They have signed on to the PostgreSQL project on "our" terms of
development - if they want to sponsor someone to backport something for
their own situation, they can do so. Otherwise, they perhaps should
have not been using PostgreSQL for their particular app in the first place!
It's not worth thinking along the lines of "oh if only we could get this
feature out RIGHT NOW, we'd get more users and more people uprading and
convertign and better reviews and stuff - but that's a distraction.
There will ALWAYS be Just One More Feature that we need to be "really
great". Just don't worry about it.
Chris