Horton
Menu

Re: First draft of PG 19 release notes

Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>

View thread
From: Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>
To: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>
Cc: David Geier <geidav.pg@gmail.com>, PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>
Date: 2026-04-19T18:36:57Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers 
On Sun, Apr 19, 2026 at 02:04:34PM -0400, Andres Freund wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On 2026-04-19 13:53:08 -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > The text I put in the wiki, which I have followed for years, says:
> >
> > 	https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Creating_Major_Release_Notes
> > 	Performance improvements are mentioned in the release notes if
> > 	they are user-visible (e.g., new syntax) or significant enough
> > 	to enable new workloads.
> >
> > I didn't think +12-17% for an index build would enable new workloads.
> > If you want to relitigate that, you are welcome to do so.  If this is
> > changed, it has to be done so consistently, not just for this item.
> 
> Just about everyone has disagreed vehemently with you about this, in every of
> the last 5 releases or so.  I don't think it's ok that you continue to ignore
> that.

That is not my recollection, and I thought I would have heard more about
it if that was the case.

> I find this policy so depressing that I stopped even opening the release
> notes, just to preserve whatever semblance of sanity I possess.  I'm know I'm
> not alone in that.

Well, I just merged the wiki text to explain that we have to consider
how much an item is of interest when adding it:

	While the major release notes include changes to the documented
	extension interface, it does not include all changes of interest
	to extension developers or Postgres forks because doing so would
	include too many items that would be uninteresting to the general
	audience.  Performance improvements are mentioned in the release
	notes if they are user-visible (e.g., new syntax) or significant
	enough to enable new workloads.

So, if you want to change this process, please feel free to get
agreement on new text that I can follow, or someone else can follow.

I have always hesitated to expand the list of items with concern that
general Postgres users will lose interest in reading it.  I have in mind
that the release notes are not for me or hackers subscribers to read.

I think we expanded the the list for optimizer changes.  Could we find a
way to do that more that would be readable?  I don't know.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>        https://momjian.us
  EDB                                      https://enterprisedb.com

  Do not let urgent matters crowd out time for investment in the future.

Commits

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

  1. doc PG 19 relnotes: remove VALIDATE CONSTRAINT lock item

  2. Fix ALTER DOMAIN VALIDATE CONSTRAINT locking

  3. Revert "Enable fast default for domains with non-volatile constraints"

  4. doc PG 19 relnotes: improve awkward or confusing wording

  5. doc PG 19 relnotes: more fixes

  6. doc PG 19 relnotes: various corrections

  7. doc PG 19 relnotes: adjust item to mention pg_replication_slots

  8. doc PG 19 relnotes: remove "Add fake LSN support to hash index"

  9. doc PG 19 relnotes: add two optimizer hooks

  10. doc PG 19 relnotes: remove "Optionally" for CPU optimizations

  11. doc PG 19 relnotes: adjustments/removal of items

  12. doc PG 19 relnotes: add UTF-8 case folding performance item

  13. doc PG 19 relnotes: correct two items

  14. doc PG 19 relnotes: add missing commits and details

  15. doc PG 19 relnotes: fix typo, "date" -> "data"

  16. doc PG 19 relnotes: add author and move items

  17. doc PG 19 relnotes: update author

  18. doc PG 19 relnotes: add free space map all-visible item

  19. doc PG 19 relnotes: remove "Lakshmi N" as author of checksums

  20. doc PG 19 relnotes: fix "now targets"

  21. doc PG 19 relnotes: adjust ShmemRequestStruct item

  22. Improve various new-to-v19 appendStringInfo calls

  23. doc: Fix data_checksums data type

  24. Fix WITHOUT OVERLAPS' interaction with domains.

  25. Online enabling and disabling of data checksums

  26. Doc: split functions-posix-regexp section into multiple subsections.

  27. make immutability tests in to_json and to_jsonb complete

  28. Optimize tuple deformation

  29. pgstattuple: Optimize pgstattuple_approx() with streaming read

  30. Use fake LSNs to improve nbtree dropPin behavior.

  31. Use streaming read for VACUUM cleanup of GIN

  32. Clean up ICU includes.

  33. ICU: use UTF8-optimized case conversion API

  34. Add the MODE option to the WAIT FOR LSN command

  35. Speedup tuple deformation with additional function inlining