Re: Thoughts on maintaining 7.3

Bruce Momjian wrote:

>Andrew Sullivan wrote:
>  
>
>>On Fri, Oct 03, 2003 at 09:17:16AM -0700, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>What if the feature does break compatibility with old features?
>>>What if it is "truly" a new feature?
>>>      
>>>
>>There is _no_ mechanism in the community right now for testing all
>>these new features in the so-called stable tree.
>>
>>I have lately been taking the position that Linux is only a
>>second-best choice for production use, precisely because of the
>>constant introduction of shiny new features in the supposed stable
>>branch.  Without using something like RHAS or Debian stable, I think
>>one is asking for trouble.  One needs to do a great deal of testing
>>    
>>
>
>Agreed.  Great Bridge was going to test our releases and only distribute
>the good ones --- obviously they were thinking of Linux kernels and not
>PostgreSQL.  You almost need a commercial company to do testing with
>Linux kernels.   PostgreSQL doesn't require this, and I think Linux is
>popular _in_ _spite_ of their buggy backported kernels (odd numbers?),
>not because of it.
>
>  
>
The reason there is a lot of backporting in Linux kernels is that there 
is such a lot of time (2 years or more) between major kernel releases. 
This is not surprising given the kernel's complexity, but it is not the 
case here, with releases every 6 months or so.

In general I agree that only true bug fixes should go in later versions 
of official releases after they are out - if anyone wants to backpatch 
features they can, but then they wear the risk. Do it on GBorg if you 
like, but not in the main tree.

cheers

andrew