RE: psql \l error

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tom Lane [mailto:tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us]
> 
> "Hiroshi Inoue" <Inoue@tpf.co.jp> writes:
> > What I wanted was to know official opinions about backward
> > compatibility of clients(not only psql)included in PostgreSQL's
> > release.
> 
> "Official" opinions?  I think we all just have our own opinions around
> here :-).
>

Yes,but shouldn't there be some guidelines around here ?
For example,maybeThe latest version of libpq should be able to replace older versionof libpq without re-compilation and
beable to talk to all backendsafter 6.4.The latest version of odbc driver should be able to replace those ofolder
versionsand be able talk to all backends after 6.2. 
 

I don't know about perl,jdbc,pgaccess etc....

> > As for psql it isn't a generic client software as Peter mentioned.
> > It's a part of backend in a sense. At least it could talk to pre-7.0
> > backend and it isn't so critical that \l,\df and \dd doesn't work for 
> > pre-7.0 backends. I'm not so much eager to change psql myself.
> 
> My opinion is that we'd be boxing ourselves in far too much to commit
> to never having any system-catalog changes across versions.  So I'm
> not particularly disturbed that functions that involve system catalog
> queries sometimes are version-specific.  We should avoid breaking
> essential functions of psql, but I don't think \df and friends are
> essential...
>

I don't think \df etc are essential for not generic client software either.
So I've not complained about it. I only wanted to confirm Peter and 
others' opinions on this occasion.  I apologize if my poor English
confused ML members.  

Regards.

Hiroshi Inoue
Inoue@tpf.co.jp