Re: PostgreSQL support

[Joerg Sonnenberger <joerg%britannica.bec.de@localhost>]

On Sat, Oct 10, 2015 at 08:06:49PM +0200, Tobias Nygren wrote:
> I know of still existing 8.2 production deployments with database sizes
> in excess of 200GB and plenty of stored produces & java application code
> that depend on 8.x behaviour. It is not always super-easy to update.
> But that does not mean we have to support it in pkgsrc proper when even
> upstream drops support.

I don't say it is super-easy, I've had my own fun migrating 100GB+
installations from one version to another. That doesn't mean such a
migration shouldn't be done every couple of years. E.g. 8.2 has been
EOLed almost four years ago.

There are quite a few good reasons for staying with supported versions.
Security might not matter for a database not facing the public, but
there have been quite a few bug fixes for edge conditions, especially
around rare situations like the transaction turnover. The sign of a good
admin is preparedness. Hitting those bugs one way or another will result
in massive unscheduled downtime. To me, that's a very good reason for a
business case of getting the resources to update every once in a while.
The original "three versions of PG" policy was based exactly on this
approach: to have one "bleading edge" version in the system you can try
for new features and see to mature; a normal stable version for most
users with a normal change window of a every twoish years; a long
term stable version for those where an update cycle should be even
longer. That turns out to be a bit shorter than the normal PG EOL cycle,
but not much.

On IRC, the question was raised what the difference with e.g. BDB is.
There have been no sweaping license changes with PostgreSQL, ever. The
API is much more mature. The portability of the code doesn't have sudden
negative spikes. I would love to get rid of most of the BDB versions
too, so that only db5 and db6 remain, but I don't think that's
practical. 

> Maybe we could have some kind of separate add-on repository (similar to
> pkgsrc-wip) where historical versions and encumbered software can be
> maintained when users object to package removals?

It's already moderately easy to keep your own versions under local/, I
don't think it is really necessary.

Joerg