Re: how to gate experimental features (SQL/PGQ)

Matheus Alcantara <matheusssilv97@gmail.com>

From: Matheus Alcantara <matheusssilv97@gmail.com>
To: Daniel Gustafsson <daniel@yesql.se>, Peter Eisentraut <peter@eisentraut.org>
Cc: PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>, Ashutosh Bapat <ashutosh.bapat.oss@gmail.com>
Date: 2026-01-14T21:15:47Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers
On 14/01/26 17:57, Daniel Gustafsson wrote:
>> On 13 Jan 2026, at 15:16, Peter Eisentraut <peter@eisentraut.org> wrote:
> 
>> 2) A run-time setting (GUC) like experimental_pgq = on/off.  This would be checked in the relevant DDL (CREATE/ALTER/DROP) commands as well as the GRAPH_TABLE function.  So without that you couldn't do anything with it, but for example pg_dump and psql and ecpg preproc would still work and the system catalogs exist.  Default to off for one release (subject to change).
> 
> Such a GUC would IMHO only make sense if we remove it when we promote the
> feature, but removing a GUC also comes with a cost for anyone having baked it
> into their scripts etc.  If we feel confident enough that a patch satisfies the
> security requirements to merge it, I think we should make it available.
> 
Instead of having a GUC for each potential experimental feature we 
could have just a single GUC with a list of experimental features that 
are enabled.

SET enable_experimental_features = "foo,bar,baz";

-- 
Matheus Alcantara
EDB: https://www.enterprisedb.com