Hi All,
On Sunday, May 27, 2012 08:40:57 PM Magnus Hagander wrote:
> On Sunday, May 27, 2012, Marti Raudsepp wrote:
> > Hi list,
> >
> > It always bothers me that Google links to version-specific PostgreSQL
> > documentation pages, usually an obsolete version. This patch lets you
> > easily navigate to the version you want by adding a new line at the
> > top:
> >
> > This page in other versions: 9.2 / 9.1 / 9.0 / 8.4 / 8.3 / 8.2 / 8.1 /
> > 8.0 / 7.4 / 7.3 / 7.2 / devel
> >
> > The same page in different versions is assumed to have the same file
> > name. No effort is done to track pages which have been
> > removed/added/split/renamed -- I think that would be lots of
> > complexity for little gain. For example, The 7.4 version contains 644
> > doc pages, and only 68 of those (~10%) aren't present in 9.2. In
> > actual relevant versions, the overlap is much greater.
>
> Pretty sure this was discussed before, and rejected then as not being what
> we wanted due to the lack of tracking cross-version changes (if it was just
> the links, it could've been done a long time ago..)
>
> It might wel be worth reopening that discussion though. I think the
> important part is not missing pages - it's pages that contain the same
> information but have been renamed (because the section was renamed). E.g.
> it's not a problem that there is no mapping for pg_basebackup in versions
> prior to 9.1 - because it simply did not exist.
The amount of pages actually having been renamed isn't that big. Marti opened
up his version of the docs to me and I browsed along and even between 7.4 and
9.1 I had a hard time finding pages where you would expect a link from 7.4
forwards.
Except very minor cases (e.g. sql-createconstraint.html => sql-
createtrigger.html) the pagenames for the sql commands itself haven't changed
in quite a while now. And imo that and some of the function references is
where you most often want to switch between individual versions because you
want to ensure youre back/forward compatible.
Sure, it won't be totally perfect, but the usability win already is so big in
comparison with trying to change the version in the url all the time that I
don't get why those few corner cases should block the imo large improvment.
If anything pages which changed their meaning but kept the name would be
worrying, but I don't really see that happnening often enough to be relevant.
Greetings,
Andres
-- Andres Freund http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training &
Services