I have been thinking about where we are in the release process for 8.3. I know we hoped for a July beta, but soon after the 8.3 feature freeze it was clear that we weren't going to make that date. I am sure some people are frustrated we are not closer to beta.
Looking at where we are now, there are only two alternatives --- keep pressing on, or discard patches to force an earlier beta. The idea of discarding patches is bad for two reasons: 1) It is not fair to the patch submitters who completed their work by the feature freeze. 2) We are going to be no better at dealing with these patches during 8.4 than we are now. While someone could make the case that we need to disregard #1 for the good of the community release, #2 is really a firm issue we can't ignore. So, unless we can say we don't want the functionality in the pending patches we have to just keep moving forward. All outstanding patches are probably things we want so there is no value to pushing them to 8.4. In fact, some of these we pushed from 8.2 to 8.3, and as you can see, they got little major review during the 8.3 development cycle, so now is the time to give them the attention they need. On the patch status page: http://developer.postgresql.org/index.php/Todo:PatchStatus We have three major patches: * HOT * Group Item Tuples * Text Search With six weeks left until the start of September, I think we can assume four weeks to focus on these three big patches, then another few weeks to apply the more minor patches and resolve all outstanding issues before we enter beta. The good news is that 8.3 is going to be a blockbuster release. 8.2 was the polishing of existing features so it is good 8.3 is going to be a _must-upgrade_ release for most users. In fact, one of the reasons that it is taking so long to get to beta is that thanks to development from EnterpriseDB and others we are getting 8.4 and 8.5 features in 8.3. But those features are coming from people who don't have a history of developing complex patches for PostgreSQL so we have to be extra-careful in review. Assuming the review goes well, we can assume that less review will be required for future patches from these developers so hopefully 8.4 will be quicker. -- Bruce Momjian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://momjian.us EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. + ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 7: You can help support the PostgreSQL project by donating at http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate