Mega-commits to "stable" version

"Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy> writes:
> Another 'mega-commit' of back-patches ... 
> 
> - - integrating the #include file cleanup that Bruce recently did
> - - got the CPU change to adt/Makefile 
> - - changing DOUBLEALIGN -> MAXALIGN

Is anyone else disturbed by wholesale changes to what is supposed to
be a stable release?

I am sure Marc will say these are low-risk changes --- but they're not
*no* risk, because there is always a chance of propagating part of
some other change that you didn't want, or failing to propagate all
of the change you did want.  And how much testing will the modified
6.5.x code get before it gets published as a stable version?

My feeling is that we should only back-patch essential bug fixes.
You can define "essential" as "anything a user requests", if you like.
But surely code cleanups do not qualify unless they fix a demonstrable
bug.

Just my $0.02...
        regards, tom lane