another 2c (AUS) worth - but that's 2.1 US cents at the moment!

Another strictly user, but I'll go along with Brent's sentiment on this - we 
are lucky that our servers are all FreeBSD - meaning that we are now running 
the 9.0.3 / 1.5.2 combination straight out of ports. Upgrades (just went from 
8.3 to 9.0) have gone smoothly. I wouldn't say we are early adopters, but our 
upgrade decisions are now driven by reducing providing backward 
compatibility... so I would be comfortable with the suggestion of not trying to 
provide backward compatibility to everyone.

I would however suggest that although I understand Regina's limit of 3, I think 
maintaining 8.4 support may have to exist beyond the release of PG9.2, as the 
move from 8.4 -> 9 is probably far more difficult that 8.3 -> 8.4.

cheers

Ben


On 22/04/2011, at 10:59 AM, Stephen Woodbridge wrote:

> Brent,
> 
> Well said! I was trying to frame this same sediment.
> 
> Devs,
> 
> I'm on the mapserver PSC and while I am a strong advocate for user issues and 
> release compatibility, I will be one of the first to say if a major release 
> is making things faster, better, decreasing maintenance at the cost of 
> breaking backwards compatibility, then we should do that. The incentive for 
> users to upgrade is based on there being lots of better, faster, quality 
> features that they do not have on the old releases.
> 
> Given what I have heard so far, I have old versions I can use if I have to, 
> and there seems to be lots of goodness to offset the pain of upgrading. So 
> 2.0 is the time to do this. Waiting until 3.0 will probably not a good idea.
> 
> Thanks for everyone time and efforts on building such a great product!
> 
> -Steve
> 
> On 4/21/2011 9:35 PM, [email protected] wrote:
>> 02c worth strictly from a user's perspective:
>> 
>> New users will generally start with current latest versions. So they
>> should be fine.
>> 
>> Old users who have difficulty upgrading. (Oft times me :-) my call. If I
>> need Postgis to work with 8.3, I use v1.5, if I need later Postgis
>> functionailty, I upgrade. I still have a choice, as long as the older
>> versions are available, even if they are no longer officially supported.
>> 
>> The rate of development of Postgis & Postgres is great. I'd sooner see
>> the developers free to develop, making the most of their valuable &
>> appreciated time, rather than spending time just keeping older Postgres
>> versions supported.
>> 
>> Thanks everyone!
>> 
>> Brent Wood
>> 
>> --- On *Fri, 4/22/11, Paragon Corporation /<[email protected]>/* wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>    From: Paragon Corporation <[email protected]>
>>    Subject: Re: [postgis-users] [postgis-devel] PSC Vote to officially
>>    drop support for PostgreSQL 8.3 in PostGIS 2.0
>>    To: "'PostGIS Development Discussion'"
>>    <[email protected]>
>>    Cc: "'PostGIS Users Discussion'" <[email protected]>
>>    Date: Friday, April 22, 2011, 12:57 PM
>> 
>> 
>>    Mark,
>>    Agree with Paul -- we did say all PSC should at least feel
>>    comfortable with
>>    our position and be able to defend it. Though probably something we
>>    need to
>>    clarify in our voting rules.
>> 
>>    I've cc'd the regular users group since I feel they would be most
>>    affected
>>    by this decision and would like to hear their opinions on it.
>> 
>>    First let's keep things in perspective. We are talking about not having
>>    support for PostgreSQL 8.3 for PostGIS 2.0. We will still do our
>>    duty and
>>    support PostgreSQL 8.3 on PostGIS 1.3-1.5 and if we don't have to worry
>>    about also supporting it on 2.0, we'll have many more cycles to support
>>    issues that arise in 1.3-1.5.
>> 
>> 
>>    More food for thought -
>>     From all the signals I have seen, I just feel trying to support
>>    PostgreSQL
>>    8.3 on PostGIS 2.0 is a really bad idea.
>> 
>>    I will add this. It's not just the testing, it’s the fact that requiring
>>    our 2.0 code work on PostgreSQL 8.3 is going to slow our release as all
>>    PostGIS developers will need to limit their feature set to work on
>>    8.3 and
>>    avoid new features that will make programming easier and more
>>    efficient. We
>>    have much more plpgsql code in PostGIS 2.0, than we have ever had in
>>    prior
>>    versions, which makes the task much more difficult.
>> 
>>     From what I can gather most distros package just one version of
>>    PostGIS with
>>    each version of PostgreSQL if they package PostGIS at all. I just
>>    helped a
>>    client port their database to an ubuntu server on a different host
>>    and the
>>    stable on Ubuntu 10 is 8.4 with PostGIS 1.4. In fact even the backports
>>    that have PostgreSQL 9.0, I can't find 1.5 so had to compile
>>    ourselves to
>>    get 1.5. This is not something most users new to PostgreSQL or
>>    PostGIS will
>>    be willing to do. So the reality is if they want to stay stable
>>    they'll be
>>    using 8.2 with 1.4. Similar story with centos. Yum rpms packages
>>    just one
>>    version of PostGIS with 8.4 and 9.0. For 9.0 it's 1.5.
>> 
>>    If we don't make release before the PostgreSQL 9.1 cut (which I really
>>    fear given all we need to test and finish), we are going to have a
>>    lot of
>>    new users starting off their PostGIS experience on 1.5 and it's
>>    going to be
>>    next to impossible to get them to upgrade.
>> 
>>    If you are at all concerned about new users, you need to take this into
>>    consideration. The ratio of new users is exponential so that I
>>    suspect in
>>    a year's time if it is not the case already we will have a lot more new
>>    users with less than 1 years experience with PostGIS / PostgreSQL
>>    than we
>>    have users with more than 1 years experience.
>> 
>>    Thanks,
>>    Regina
>> 
>>    -----Original Message-----
>>    From: [email protected]
>>    </mc/[email protected]>
>>    [mailto:[email protected]
>>    </mc/[email protected]>] On
>>    Behalf Of Paul
>>    Ramsey
>>    Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2011 6:54 PM
>>    To: PostGIS Development Discussion
>>    Subject: Re: [postgis-devel] PSC Vote to officially drop support for
>>    PostgreSQL 8.3 in PostGIS 2.0
>> 
>>    -1 means "veto and I'll do what it takes to make my position stick".
>>    So you're OK being 8.3 compatibility tester and fixer?
>> 
>>    P.
>> 
>>    On Thu, Apr 21, 2011 at 12:27 PM, Mark Cave-Ayland
>>    <[email protected]
>>    </mc/[email protected]>> wrote:
>>     > On 14/04/11 12:02, Paragon Corporation wrote:
>>     >
>>     >> I hereby call a PSC Vote to officially drop support for PostgreSQL
>>     >> 8.3 in PostGIS 2.0.
>>     >>
>>     >> I think enough has been said on the topic that it is clear to me
>>     >> PostgreSQL
>>     >> 8.3 is becoming a bit of a burden to maintain for both regression
>>     >> testing and as well as having to hold back on features
>>    introduced in
>>     >> newer versions of PostgreSQL.
>>     >>
>>     >> With this official drop we will then be available to take advantage
>>     >> of
>>     >>
>>     >> 1) Window functions, CTES, variadic functions, RETURN QUERY
>>    EXECUTE,
>>     >> CASE in pl/pgsql, EXECUTE using, user-defined exceptions,
>>     >> and a slew of other features itemized in PostgreSQL feature matrix
>>     >> http://www.postgresql.org/about/featurematrix
>>     >>
>>     >> 2) Not have to regress test against 8.3 any longer
>>     >> 3) Get rid of the stupid hack we have in place for pgxs
>>     >> 4) Get rid of that conditional logic we have in place for
>>    aggregation
>>     >> to handle versions that don't support windowing
>>     >>
>>     >> This is just one step, but my more aggressive requirement which I
>>     >> shall put in as a second PSC Vote, is to not support more than
>>     >> 3 versions of PostgreSQL on any version of PostGIS unless there are
>>     >> extenuating circumstances. More on that later.
>>     >>
>>     >> All PSC voters, please give your vote.
>>     >
>>     > I'm probably in the minority, but -1 from me.
>>     >
>>     >
>>     > ATB,
>>     >
>>     > Mark.
>>     >
>>     > --
>>     > Mark Cave-Ayland - Senior Technical Architect PostgreSQL - PostGIS
>>     > Sirius Corporation plc - control through freedom
>>     > http://www.siriusit.co.uk
>>     > t: +44 870 608 0063
>>     >
>>     > Sirius Labs: http://www.siriusit.co.uk/labs
>>     > _______________________________________________
>>     > postgis-devel mailing list
>>     > [email protected]
>>    </mc/[email protected]>
>>     > http://postgis.refractions.net/mailman/listinfo/postgis-devel
>>     >
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