On 01/14/2014 12:40 AM, Merlin Moncure wrote: > On Sun, Jan 12, 2014 at 4:38 AM, Craig Ringer <cr...@2ndquadrant.com> wrote: >> Implicit casts to text, anybody? > > This backward compatibility break orphaned the company I work for on > 8.1 until last year and very nearly caused postgres to be summarily > extirpated (only rescued at the last minute by my arrival).
You're far from the only one, too. Until last year I was still seeing people saying they "can't" upgrade because of this. OTOH, that was a sudden and drastic change, with no BC switch like the removal of implicit joins had, that affected wide swaths of code. Lets not do that again. Removal of lower bounds for arrays is unlikely to even get noticed by the vast majority of users, and can be done progressively with BC features. The real issue IMO is how to get those few to stop using it so it can be truly removed. Past experience has shown that people just turn the compatibility flag on and forget they're using the deprecated feature. If there are warnings they'll silence them in their application and still forget they're using the deprecated feature. If there are log messages, they'll probably turn logging detail down to hide them and STILL forget they're using the deprecated feature. Then whine about it three years later when it gets removed. So I guess the question is: Is it worth all that hassle to remove a misfeature you have to go out of your way to use? Is support for non-1 lower bounds stopping us from doing something useful and important? Or is it just an irritation that it exists? -- Craig Ringer http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/ PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training & Services -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
