Re: Default Roles (was: Additional role attributes)

On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 11:50 AM, Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net> wrote:
> * Robert Haas (robertmhaas@gmail.com) wrote:
>> Yes: let's punt this to 9.6.  The decisions you're making here are way
>> too significant to be making a couple of days before feature freeze,
>> and this patch has changed massively since it was first submitted.
>> There isn't time now for people who want to have an opinion on this to
>> form an educated one.
>
> Perhaps I'm missing something, but the patch has been simplified down to
> the point where the only question seems to be "should we have default
> roles or not?", which I had asked about two weeks ago and again last
> week on a new thread.  I feel like we're waiting for the silent majority
> to chime in.

The thing is, right now, there are many, many patches in flight and
everybody is really, really busy with them.  What we should be trying
to push in right now are the patches that we know we want, and there
are at most a few minor implementation details to sort out.  We should
not be trying to push in any patches where we are not confident in the
design.  I really don't see how you can be confident that this design
will have the backing of the community at this point.  It's changed in
major ways, multiple times.  The latest version, again majorly
revised, was posted TWO DAYS before feature freeze.  Two days is not
enough time to get meaningful feedback on significant design decisions
under the best of circumstances, and even less so when those two days
are the last remaining days before feature freeze.

Now, if six people who are all well-known PostgreSQL contributors show
up and they all say "I looked at the latest version of this carefully
and I'm confident you've got it right", then go ahead: push it.  But
don't make the mistake of thinking that because you're confident that
you've now got it right everybody else will like it too.  Even since
you posted the last version, Heikki expressed a concern that resulted
in (surprise!) more revisions.  There comes a point where a patch that
is still heavily in flux is just too late for the release cycle, and
we're well past that point at this stage of the game.

-- 
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company