RE: psql \l error

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tom Lane [mailto:tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us]
> 
> "Hiroshi Inoue" <Inoue@tpf.co.jp> writes:
> > What I wanted was to know official opinions about backward
> > compatibility of clients(not only psql)included in PostgreSQL's
> > release.
> 
> "Official" opinions?  I think we all just have our own opinions around
> here :-).
>

Yes,but shouldn't there be some guidelines around here ?
For example,maybe
 The latest version of libpq should be able to replace older version
 of libpq without re-compilation and be able to talk to all backends
 after 6.4.
 The latest version of odbc driver should be able to replace those of
 older versions and be able talk to all backends after 6.2. 

I don't know about perl,jdbc,pgaccess etc....

> > As for psql it isn't a generic client software as Peter mentioned.
> > It's a part of backend in a sense. At least it could talk to pre-7.0
> > backend and it isn't so critical that \l,\df and \dd doesn't work for 
> > pre-7.0 backends. I'm not so much eager to change psql myself.
> 
> My opinion is that we'd be boxing ourselves in far too much to commit
> to never having any system-catalog changes across versions.  So I'm
> not particularly disturbed that functions that involve system catalog
> queries sometimes are version-specific.  We should avoid breaking
> essential functions of psql, but I don't think \df and friends are
> essential...
>

I don't think \df etc are essential for not generic client software either.
So I've not complained about it. I only wanted to confirm Peter and 
others' opinions on this occasion.  I apologize if my poor English
confused ML members.  

Regards.

Hiroshi Inoue
Inoue@tpf.co.jp