Re: Predicted lifespan of different PostgreSQL branches

Tom Lane wrote:
> Dave Page <dpage@postgresql.org> writes:
>
>> I've been considering only maintaining the current and previous 2
>> versions in pgInstaller (the Windows binary distro). But that's a *lot*
>> harder to maintain than just PostgreSQL because of all the bundled
>> stuff. In other words, when 8.3 is out, the 8.0 series gets dropped.
>> What do people think about that? Does anyone think it would be an
>> unreasonable policy?
>>
>
> Actually, I was just wondering last night about whether we should bother
> maintaining the 8.0/8.1 Windows ports at all.  Everybody knew going in
> (or should have known) that 8.0 on Windows would be a pretty raw port
> with a lot of issues, as indeed it was, and so long-term support for it
> seems a bit pointless.  Perhaps the 8.1 port was up to the point where
> it would be sane to use for production, or maybe not.
>
> I haven't tracked Windows-specific issues particularly, but I think
> there were at least some important patches we didn't back-port because
> of complexity.  Certainly 8.0 and 8.1 src/backend/port/win32/ files look
> quite a bit different.  Does anyone recall any specifics about Windows
> patches that were back-ported or not?
>
> Anyway I think that a fair case could be made for dropping the 8.0
> branch now, and maybe 8.1 too, as far as Windows support goes.  What
> you want to do going forward is a different decision --- these are
> edge cases because of the newness of the port.
>
>             regards, tom lane
>
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My 8.2c,
Having 8.1 end of life this soon after the release of 8.2 seems pretty
harsh.  I am a Windows user with systems in the field in production and
it would probably be disconcerting to customers to see/read that the
version they are using will not have the benefits of full community
support  going forward.
It should also be considered that it is probably more difficult to
alleviate the concerns of  people about using even the *best* Open
Source database on a Windows platform (please don't bash us for using
windows for now it is a necessary evil)  It seems reasonable to expect
8.1 to be alive for more than 2 months after its replacement is released.
For most production environments just the QA process for a major version
change could take longer than 2 months to schedule and implement, let
alone roll out to the hopefully growing numbers of customers.

Oisin