On Wed, Mar 13, 2024 at 1:12 PM Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Mar 13, 2024 at 09:21:27AM -0700, Jeremy Schneider wrote:
> > It's not just roadmaps and release pages where we mix up these terms
> > either, it's even in user-facing SQL and libpq routines: both
> > PQserverVersion and current_setting('server_version_num') return the
> > patch release version in the numeric patch field, rather than the
> > numeric minor field (which is always 0).
> >
> > In my view, the best thing would be to move toward consistently using
> > the word "patch" and moving away from the word "minor" for the
> > PostgreSQL quarterly maintenance updates.
> >
>
> I think "minor" is a better term since it contrasts with "major". We
> don't actually supply patches to upgrade minor versions.
>
I tend to agree with Bruce, and major/minor seems to be the more
common usage within the industry; iirc, debian, ubuntu, gnome, suse,
and mariadb all use that nomenclature; and ISTR some distro's who
release packaged versions of postgres with custom patches applied (ie
12.4-2 for postgres 12.4 patchlevel 2).
BTW, as a reminder, we do have this statement, in bold, in the
"upgrading" section of the versioning page:
"We always recommend that all users run the latest available minor
release for whatever major version is in use." There is actually
several other phrases and wording on that page that could probably be
propagated as replacement language in some of these other areas.
Robert Treat
https://xzilla.net