A quiet addition here that I'm very excited about is the extension_control_path configuration, which will make adding extensions in environments like Kubernetes a whole lot nicer (see eg https://cloudnative-pg.io/documentation/1.27/imagevolume_ext...).
PostgreSQL 18 Released
11–20 of 23 posts
Re: PostgreSQL 18 Released
#12Lots of good improvements, my favorites are Oauth, NOT NULL constraint with NOT VALID, uuidv7, RETURNING contains old/new. And I think the async IO will bring performance benefits, although maybe not so much immediately.
Re: PostgreSQL 18 Released
#13Does this release have the TAM (Table Access Methods) patch set from orioledb? Or at least parts of it?
I don't think so. What do you need it for if I may ask? If some people actually need a patch it is much more likely to get people working on it to make it committable.
I was wondering how far away OrioleDB was from becoming a pure extension instead of being a postgres fork. I'm not an expert by any means on TAM - but was curious if the Orioledb team managed to upstream some parts of their fork.
Re: PostgreSQL 18 Released
#14Eh... interesting features, yet docker upgrade is still huge PITA because upgrade between major versions is not supported :/ I love PostgreSQL, but this is just utterly annoying and discouraging to use it…
I'm super curious about what special features / extensions you're using. The only painful upgrade for me from PostgreSQL 7 to 9 (2010 IIRC, building from scratch with SSL library issues). My next upgrade (exact same database, evolved a lot in complexity with stored queries, views, ~500x size) was from 9 to 11 (2022), and it was totally painless. A few weeks ago I migrated it from 11 to 17, zero issues.
Edit: Oh, for reference, I'm not using docker, just an AWS EC2 Amazon Linux instance, with a mirror on an Alpine Linux server. PostgreSQL installed via package repo, very little custom configuration.
Re: PostgreSQL 18 Released
#15Eh... interesting features, yet docker upgrade is still huge PITA because upgrade between major versions is not supported :/ I love PostgreSQL, but this is just utterly annoying and discouraging to use it…
this is not postgres' fault.
once the latest pgautoupgrade is available, you can do it with this:
docker run --rm \
-v YOUR_DATA_VOLUME:/var/lib/postgresql/data \
-e POSTGRES_USER=USER \
-e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=PW \
-e POSTGRES_DB=DB \
-e PGAUTO_ONESHOT=yes \
pgautoupgrade/pgautoupgrade:18-bookworm
Re: PostgreSQL 18 Released
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is mostly an issue with the official docker image, not a PostgreSQL issue. Upgrading to a new major is easy if you use the Debian packages and is fine with a couple of minutes downtime. There is no reason a docker image could not do the same. The issue with PostgreSQL which the Debian packages handle fine but the Docker Hub's image does not is that you need both the executables for the old and the new major vers…
I'm fully aware why it's an issue with official image. But even with debian (or any other "packaging") there are hoops to be hopped through due to said missing upgrade handling which IMHO is very annoying. They do handle minor versions upgrade so the code handling upgrading is there but devs seems to be quite adamant against adding major version upgrade. I (well, a lot of people judging from votes and comments in htt…
> They do handle minor versions upgrade so the code handling upgrading is there but devs seems to be quite adamant against adding major version upgrade
Minor versions of PostgreSQL have constraints that major versions don't have; in that minor versions in principle don't see new features added. This allows minor versions of the same major release to run against the same data directory without modifications.
However.
Major versions add those new features, at the cost of changes to internals that show up in things like catalog layout. This causes changes in how on-disk data is interpreted, and thus this is incompatible, and unlike minor releases this requires specialized upgrade handling.
Re: PostgreSQL 18 Released
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm fully aware why it's an issue with official image. But even with debian (or any other "packaging") there are hoops to be hopped through due to said missing upgrade handling which IMHO is very annoying. They do handle minor versions upgrade so the code handling upgrading is there but devs seems to be quite adamant against adding major version upgrade. I (well, a lot of people judging from votes and comments in htt…
> They do handle minor versions upgrade so the code handling upgrading is there but devs seems to be quite adamant against adding major version upgrade Minor versions of PostgreSQL have constraints that major versions don't have; in that minor versions in principle don't see new features added. This allows minor versions of the same major release to run against the same data directory without modifications. However.…
Well, yeah. But virtually all other software can peroform the data upgrad with single/new binary and only PostgreSQL requires old binaries to be available to run `pg_upgrade`...
Re: PostgreSQL 18 Released
#18Lots of good improvements, my favorites are Oauth, NOT NULL constraint with NOT VALID, uuidv7, RETURNING contains old/new. And I think the async IO will bring performance benefits, although maybe not so much immediately.
PostgreSQL Gains a Built-in UUIDv7 Generation Function for Primary Keys (many interesting details)
Re: PostgreSQL 18 Released
#19Eh... interesting features, yet docker upgrade is still huge PITA because upgrade between major versions is not supported :/ I love PostgreSQL, but this is just utterly annoying and discouraging to use it…
That is mostly an issue with the official docker image, not a PostgreSQL issue. Upgrading to a new major is easy if you use the Debian packages and is fine with a couple of minutes downtime. There is no reason a docker image could not do the same. The issue with PostgreSQL which the Debian packages handle fine but the Docker Hub's image does not is that you need both the executables for the old and the new major vers…
> That is mostly an issue with the official docker image, not a PostgreSQL issue.
I wish Docker would stop calling their unofficial Postgres images “official”. :-/ (They're “official Docker”, but not “official Postgres”. The naming is deeply misleading for everyone who is not a Docker expert.)
Re: PostgreSQL 18 Released
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think so. What do you need it for if I may ask? If some people actually need a patch it is much more likely to get people working on it to make it committable.
I was wondering how far away OrioleDB was from becoming a pure extension instead of being a postgres fork. I'm not an expert by any means on TAM - but was curious if the Orioledb team managed to upstream some parts of their fork.
imho: not soon.
Most alternative PG storage engines have stumbled, and OrioleDB touches a lot of core surfaces. The sensible order is: first make OrioleDB rock-solid and bug-free; ( https://github.com/orioledb/orioledb/issues?q=is%3Aissue%20s... ) then, using real-world feedback and perf data, refactor and carve out patches that are upstream-ready. That’s a big lift for both the OrioleDB team and core PG.
From what I understand, they’re aiming for a release candidate in the next ~6 months; meaningful upstreaming would come after that.
In other words: make it work --> validate the plan --> upstream the final patches.