On 24 November 2011 05:36, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> Now it's possible we could do that without formally calling it a
> protocol version change, but I don't care at all for the idea of coming
> up with one-off hacks every time somebody decides that some feature is
> important enough that they have to have it Right Now instead of waiting
> for a sufficient accumulation of reasons to have a protocol flag day.
> I think "but we made arrays a bit smaller!" is a pretty lame response
> to have to give when somebody complains that Postgres 9.2 broke their
> client software. When we do it, I want to have a *long* list of good
> reasons.
Can we get a mechanism for minor protocol changes in this future
version? Something as simple as exchanging a list of protocol features
during the initial handshake (then use only features that are present
on both sides) would be enough. The difficulty of making any protocol
changes at the moment is a big stumbling block.
(You could probably retrofit that to the current protocol version)
Oliver