2009/11/3 Andrew Dunstan <and...@dunslane.net>: > > > Robert Haas wrote: >> >> We had a discussion back in July about our maintenance policy and the >> upshot of that discussion was that there were relatively few >> objections to dropping support for 7.4 - I believe Andrew Dunstan was >> the only one who spoke against it, and it wasn't clear how strenuous >> his objections were - but there were objections even to setting an >> end-of-life date for any subsequent release. However, we never really >> took any action based on that conversation. Maybe it's time? >> > > I don't object to EOLing 7.4, although I have a certain nostalgia for it ... > it's the first release that contains anything of mine in it ;-) > > What I want is a proper process for declaring an EOL, though. In particular, > we should announce it loudly and well in advance (by which I mean several > months). The PR team should swing into action with a press release along the > lines of "PostgreSQL release version n.n. will reach the end of its > maintenance life on yyyy-mm-dd. No patches of any kind will be made after > that date. Users of this version are advised to start planning now to upgrade > to a more modern version."
Didn't we discuss EOLing based on <number of previous versions>? As in if we now announced that 7.4 would EOL when we release 8.5? (Though based on previous track record, that means it really should've been EOLed when we released 8.4, I guess) >> We are also very close to six years from the original release, if >> that's a magic number for anyone. >> >> > > > Actually, I think it's a pretty good lifetime for a release. Many users don't > want to migrate as soon as a new version comes out, they want to let it > settle down. And they also don't want to have to go through the pain of > migrating more than once every few years - five would be a good number here. > (This has nothing to do with whether or not we have in place upgrade. It's > more to do with the effort involved in revalidating a large application > against a new release.) So allowing for those two things, six years is an > excellent lifetime. And 7.4 has been pretty darn robust, it should be noted. Yeah, if one version has to stick around for a long time, 7.4 was a good choice for it :-) -- Magnus Hagander Me: http://www.hagander.net/ Work: http://www.redpill-linpro.com/ -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
