Horton

Re: First draft of PG 17 release notes

Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@alvh.no-ip.org>

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From: Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@alvh.no-ip.org>
To: Jelte Fennema-Nio <postgres@jeltef.nl>
Cc: Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>, Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com>, pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Date: 2024-09-10T08:51:39Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers

Commits

Same data as JSON: GET /api/v1/messages/:b64id/commits the thread's linked commits as JSON, with link sources. API reference →

  1. Revert support for ALTER TABLE ... MERGE/SPLIT PARTITION(S) commands

  2. When creating materialized views, use REFRESH to load data.

  3. Revert temporal primary keys and foreign keys

  4. Avoid needless large memcpys in libpq socket writing

  5. Enhance nbtree ScalarArrayOp execution.

  6. Introduce a non-recursive JSON parser

  7. Combine freezing and pruning steps in VACUUM

  8. Allow SIGINT to cancel psql database reconnections.

  9. Provide API for streaming relation data.

  10. Add hash support functions and hash opclass for contrib/ltree.

  11. Pull up ANY-SUBLINK with the necessary lateral support.

  12. Read WAL directly from WAL buffers.

  13. Introduce the dynamic shared memory registry.

  14. Add macros for looping through a List without a ListCell.

  15. Support +/- infinity in the interval data type.

  16. Extend ALTER OPERATOR to allow setting more optimization attributes.

  17. Consider cheap startup paths in add_paths_to_append_rel

On 2024-Sep-10, Jelte Fennema-Nio wrote:

> I think as an extension author there are usually three types of
> changes that are relevant:
>
> 1. New APIs/hooks that are meant for extension authors

> For 1, I think adding them to the release notes makes total sense,
> especially if the new APIs are documented not only in source code, but
> also on the website. Nathan his change is of this type, so I agree
> with him it should be in the release notes.

I agree.  The volume of such items should be pretty small.

> 3. Stuff that changes behaviour of existing APIs code in a
> incompatible but silent way

> For 3, it would be very useful if it would be in the release notes,
> but I think in many cases it's hard to know what commits do this. So
> unless it's obviously going to break a bunch of extensions silently, I
> think we don't have to add such changes to the release notes.

While we cannot be 100% vigilant (and it doesn't seem likely for
automated tools to detect this), we try to avoid API changes that would
still compile but behave incompatibly.  In many review discussions you
can see suggestions to change some function signature so that
third-party authors would be aware that they need to adapt their code to
new behavior, turning cases of (3) into (2).  I agree that these don't
need release notes items.

-- 
Álvaro Herrera         PostgreSQL Developer  —  https://www.EnterpriseDB.com/
"XML!" Exclaimed C++.  "What are you doing here? You're not a programming
language."
"Tell that to the people who use me," said XML.
https://burningbird.net/the-parable-of-the-languages/