[arch-general] postgresql 9.3 -> 9.4

[Troy Engel]

On Wed, Jan 28, 2015 at 2:42 PM, Patrick Burroughs <celti at celti.name> wrote:
>
> They ARE routine, though. When dealing with databases anything more

Respectfully, they are not routine for what's being discussed. The
vendor themselves packages the binaries for each release into separate
packaged versions, with each version being a different tree, for all
the RPM and DEB distributions to prevent any sort of accidental
upgrade from, say, 9.2 to 9.3 because they know it will probably
break. It's near impossible to go from 9.2 -> 9.3 -> 9.4 for instance
without manual work; for a given 9.x -> 9.y upgrade it might be
required to run pg_upgrade as an example task.

Having a PGSQL package release that goes from 9.3 to 9.4 seems crazy
without letting folks know ahead of time, even if it's a simple
mailing list post. (the same is generally true for MySQL 5.1 -> 5.5 ->
5.6, extending to MariaDB) These database vendors do not consider a
point release as routine or minor, it's a big deal that requires the
admin to possibly perform a bunch of work - update a config file to
work out deprecated settings, run something like mysql_upgrade or
pg_upgrade to get schema changes and all that stuff. Backups are
always good. :)

I do agree that PGSQL should have been listed in IgnorePkg as a matter
of good systems admin practice, which would have prevented this
problem. IMHO you should never let your DB "just upgrade" without
meaning for it to happen explicitly - typically you'll need a restart
of the service at a minimum, so planning downtime is key for your end
users. Every once in awhile a very minor release comes down the pipe
that actually breaks something important and you should be ready to
roll back on the spot.

$0.02,
-te