Inheritance mention

Do people feel we should continue documenting that Postgres pre-7.1
didn't reference child tables by default?

(In releases before 7.1, <literal>ONLY</> was the default
behavior.) The default behavior can be modified by changing
the <xref linkend="guc-sql-inheritance"> configuration option.

I see this mentioned four places in the documentation.

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> http://momjian.us
EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com

+ If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

Bruce Momjian escreveu:
> Do people feel we should continue documenting that Postgres pre-7.1
> didn't reference child tables by default?
>
No. IMHO we should remove references to unsupported releases from documentation.

--
Euler Taveira de Oliveira
http://www.timbira.com/

Euler Taveira de Oliveira <euler(at)timbira(dot)com> writes:
> Bruce Momjian escreveu:
>> Do people feel we should continue documenting that Postgres pre-7.1
>> didn't reference child tables by default?
>>
> No. IMHO we should remove references to unsupported releases from documentation.

"Unsupported releases" is far too strict a criterion for this. For
example, there are demonstrably still people using 7.2 (we had a
question about it just last week). They will still appreciate these
notes when they get around to updating.

Pre-7.1 might indeed be old enough to cut, but how much are we really
saving? Four sentences out of our current docs doesn't excite me ...

regards, tom lane

On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 12:04 AM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> Euler Taveira de Oliveira <euler(at)timbira(dot)com> writes:
>> Bruce Momjian escreveu:
>>> Do people feel we should continue documenting that Postgres pre-7.1
>>> didn't reference child tables by default?
>>>
>> No. IMHO we should remove references to unsupported releases from documentation.
>
> "Unsupported releases" is far too strict a criterion for this.  For
> example, there are demonstrably still people using 7.2 (we had a
> question about it just last week).  They will still appreciate these
> notes when they get around to updating.
>
> Pre-7.1 might indeed be old enough to cut, but how much are we really
> saving?  Four sentences out of our current docs doesn't excite me ...

But since there's a doc set per version, it would make sense to stop
mentioning unsupported versions in the docs for supported versions,
no? Or is this a FAQ thing we're talking about?

Scott Marlowe <scott(dot)marlowe(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 12:04 AM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
>> Pre-7.1 might indeed be old enough to cut, but how much are we really
>> saving? Four sentences out of our current docs doesn't excite me ...

> But since there's a doc set per version, it would make sense to stop
> mentioning unsupported versions in the docs for supported versions,
> no? Or is this a FAQ thing we're talking about?

The problem is what to tell people to read if they want to transition
from an unsupported version to a supported version.

If we really wanted to save some space, we could cut all the release
notes for pre-7.4 (soon pre-8.0) releases. But somehow that doesn't
seem like a good idea. What it would mainly accomplish is to make it
hard to find the old information when you wanted it.

regards, tom lane

Tom Lane wrote:
> Scott Marlowe <scott(dot)marlowe(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> > On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 12:04 AM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> >> Pre-7.1 might indeed be old enough to cut, but how much are we really
> >> saving? Four sentences out of our current docs doesn't excite me ...
>
> > But since there's a doc set per version, it would make sense to stop
> > mentioning unsupported versions in the docs for supported versions,
> > no? Or is this a FAQ thing we're talking about?
>
> The problem is what to tell people to read if they want to transition
> from an unsupported version to a supported version.
>
> If we really wanted to save some space, we could cut all the release
> notes for pre-7.4 (soon pre-8.0) releases. But somehow that doesn't
> seem like a good idea. What it would mainly accomplish is to make it
> hard to find the old information when you wanted it.

It is not a question of documention bulk but the burden of having users
wade through a paragraph that is much more complex because of the 7.1
mention.

I have applied the attached patch to remove mention of the 7.1 behavior
in alter_table and select; I have kept the main documentation mentions
unchanged. I also still reference the sql_inheritance GUC variable,
where there are more details.

Maybe I wasn't clear in my original posting; I never wanted to remove
all mentions, but rather retain mentions in logical locations.

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> http://momjian.us
EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com

+ If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +