On 9 September 2016 at 00:19, Peter Eisentraut
<peter.eisentraut@2ndquadrant.com> wrote:
> On 9/8/16 11:16 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
>> This is a problem, if ICU won't guarantee cross-version compatibility,
>> because it destroys the argument that moving to ICU would offer us
>> collation behavior stability.
>
> It would offer a significant upgrade over the current situation.
>
> First, it offers stability inside the same version. Whereas glibc might
> change a collation in a minor upgrade, ICU won't do that. And the
> postgres binary is bound to a major version of ICU by the soname (which
> changes with every major release). So this would avoid the situation
> that a simple OS update could break collations.
It also lets *users* and PostgreSQL-specific distributors bundle ICU
and get stable collations. We can't exactly bundle glibc.
-- Craig Ringer http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training & Services