PostgreSQL wiki - User contributions [en]

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-06-08T14:10:56Z

Bmomjian: adjust order

The major release notes attempt to document every user-visible and user-impactful change. Performance improvements are not mentioned unless they are user-visible (e.g., new syntax) or significant enough to enable new workloads. Similarly, 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.

0. Find branch date with query
git show --summary $(git merge-base REL_18_STABLE master)

1. 01raw ("01raw" is the file name I use)
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

2. 02trim
add "[DOC" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
cmd = "git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | wc -l";
cmd | getline lines;
close(cmd);

cmd = "git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -c \"^doc/\"";
cmd | getline doc_lines;
close(cmd);

if (doc_lines > 0)
{
# skip commit subject line
if (doc_lines < lines - 1)
doc = "[DOC & CODE]";
else
doc = "[DOC ONLY]";
}
}

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use text editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
I use MicroEmacs 4 [https://momjian.us/download/uemacs4_pg.mac macros] to do this.
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items and incompatibilities

3. 03comments
replace "[DOC " with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC //'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading space on commit text

4. 04reword
reword items

5. 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove trailing spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix </para><para for double-paras

6. 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
append 05tags
cat 05tags >> 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using text editor
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown file for gedit access

use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

7. 07order
order inside of sections
most important item first in section
if none, then largest group first
group similar items together
order group by item importance
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

8. 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in text editor, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
checck names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters

9. PDF
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

10. Post release note URL to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org

11. Post blog after a few days of feedback

12. To show commits that were excluded, use:

<pre>
# Usage: command git_changelog_output release_notes

# Create a "!=" string to compare all commit hashes in the release notes.
PATTERN=$(awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {first = "Y";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
if (first != "Y")
printf(" && ");
first="N";
printf("$2 != \"" $2 "\"");
}
}' "$2"
)

awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
{
if ($0 ~ /^Author: /)
save_author=$0;
else if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
if ('"$PATTERN"')
{
print save_author;
print $0;
}
else
save_author="";
}
else if (save_author != "")
print $0;
}' "$1"
</pre>
and then run the script in #2 to add "[DOC" markers; email to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org.

13. Do the following after community feedbackscript, hopefully before beta1
delayed because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
14. Do this near the final release date so diff analysis is easier
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-06-08T13:40:50Z

Bmomjian: grouping details

The major release notes attempt to document every user-visible and user-impactful change. Performance improvements are not mentioned unless they are user-visible (e.g., new syntax) or significant enough to enable new workloads. Similarly, 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.

0. Find branch date with query
git show --summary $(git merge-base REL_18_STABLE master)

1. 01raw ("01raw" is the file name I use)
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

2. 02trim
add "[DOC" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
cmd = "git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | wc -l";
cmd | getline lines;
close(cmd);

cmd = "git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -c \"^doc/\"";
cmd | getline doc_lines;
close(cmd);

if (doc_lines > 0)
{
# skip commit subject line
if (doc_lines < lines - 1)
doc = "[DOC & CODE]";
else
doc = "[DOC ONLY]";
}
}

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use text editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
I use MicroEmacs 4 [https://momjian.us/download/uemacs4_pg.mac macros] to do this.
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items and incompatibilities

3. 03comments
replace "[DOC " with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC //'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading space on commit text

4. 04reword
reword items

5. 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove trailing spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix </para><para for double-paras

6. 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
append 05tags
cat 05tags >> 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using text editor
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown file for gedit access

use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

7. 07order
order inside of sections
most important item first in section
if none, then largest group first
most important items first in each group
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

8. 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in text editor, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
checck names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters

9. PDF
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

10. Post release note URL to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org

11. Post blog after a few days of feedback

12. To show commits that were excluded, use:

<pre>
# Usage: command git_changelog_output release_notes

# Create a "!=" string to compare all commit hashes in the release notes.
PATTERN=$(awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {first = "Y";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
if (first != "Y")
printf(" && ");
first="N";
printf("$2 != \"" $2 "\"");
}
}' "$2"
)

awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
{
if ($0 ~ /^Author: /)
save_author=$0;
else if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
if ('"$PATTERN"')
{
print save_author;
print $0;
}
else
save_author="";
}
else if (save_author != "")
print $0;
}' "$1"
</pre>
and then run the script in #2 to add "[DOC" markers; email to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org.

13. Do the following after community feedbackscript, hopefully before beta1
delayed because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
14. Do this near the final release date so diff analysis is easier
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-06-01T14:22:12Z

Bmomjian: move section

The major release notes attempt to document every user-visible and user-impactful change. Performance improvements are not mentioned unless they are user-visible (e.g., new syntax) or significant enough to enable new workloads. Similarly, 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.

0. Find branch date with query
git show --summary $(git merge-base REL_18_STABLE master)

1. 01raw ("01raw" is the file name I use)
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

2. 02trim
add "[DOC" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
cmd = "git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | wc -l";
cmd | getline lines;
close(cmd);

cmd = "git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -c \"^doc/\"";
cmd | getline doc_lines;
close(cmd);

if (doc_lines > 0)
{
# skip commit subject line
if (doc_lines < lines - 1)
doc = "[DOC & CODE]";
else
doc = "[DOC ONLY]";
}
}

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use text editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
I use MicroEmacs 4 [https://momjian.us/download/uemacs4_pg.mac macros] to do this.
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items and incompatibilities

3. 03comments
replace "[DOC " with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC //'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading space on commit text

4. 04reword
reword items

5. 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove trailing spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix </para><para for double-paras

6. 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
append 05tags
cat 05tags >> 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using text editor
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown file for gedit access

use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

7. 07order
order inside of groups
most important items first in each section
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

8. 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in text editor, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
checck names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters

9. PDF
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

10. Post release note URL to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org

11. Post blog after a few days of feedback

12. To show commits that were excluded, use:

<pre>
# Usage: command git_changelog_output release_notes

# Create a "!=" string to compare all commit hashes in the release notes.
PATTERN=$(awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {first = "Y";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
if (first != "Y")
printf(" && ");
first="N";
printf("$2 != \"" $2 "\"");
}
}' "$2"
)

awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
{
if ($0 ~ /^Author: /)
save_author=$0;
else if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
if ('"$PATTERN"')
{
print save_author;
print $0;
}
else
save_author="";
}
else if (save_author != "")
print $0;
}' "$1"
</pre>
and then run the script in #2 to add "[DOC" markers; email to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org.

13. Do the following after community feedbackscript, hopefully before beta1
delayed because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
14. Do this near the final release date so diff analysis is easier
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-06-01T14:12:49Z

Bmomjian: add 14.

0. Find branch date with query
git show --summary $(git merge-base REL_18_STABLE master)

1. 01raw ("01raw" is the file name I use)
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

2. 02trim
add "[DOC" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
cmd = "git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | wc -l";
cmd | getline lines;
close(cmd);

cmd = "git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -c \"^doc/\"";
cmd | getline doc_lines;
close(cmd);

if (doc_lines > 0)
{
# skip commit subject line
if (doc_lines < lines - 1)
doc = "[DOC & CODE]";
else
doc = "[DOC ONLY]";
}
}

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use text editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
I use MicroEmacs 4 [https://momjian.us/download/uemacs4_pg.mac macros] to do this.
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items and incompatibilities

3. 03comments
replace "[DOC " with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC //'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading space on commit text

4. 04reword
reword items

5. 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove trailing spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix </para><para for double-paras

6. 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
append 05tags
cat 05tags >> 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using text editor
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown file for gedit access

use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

7. 07order
order inside of groups
most important items first in each section
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

8. 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in text editor, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
checck names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters

9. PDF
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

10. Post release note URL to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org

11. Post blog after a few days of feedback

12. To show commits that were excluded, use:

<pre>
# Usage: command git_changelog_output release_notes

# Create a "!=" string to compare all commit hashes in the release notes.
PATTERN=$(awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {first = "Y";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
if (first != "Y")
printf(" && ");
first="N";
printf("$2 != \"" $2 "\"");
}
}' "$2"
)

awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
{
if ($0 ~ /^Author: /)
save_author=$0;
else if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
if ('"$PATTERN"')
{
print save_author;
print $0;
}
else
save_author="";
}
else if (save_author != "")
print $0;
}' "$1"
</pre>
and then run the script in #2 to add "[DOC" markers; email to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org.

13. Do the following after community feedbackscript, hopefully before beta1
delayed because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
14. Do this near the final release date so diff analysis is easier
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

The major release notes attempt to document every user-visible and user-impactful change. 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. Similarly, performance improvements are not mentioned in the release notes unless they are user-visible (e.g., new syntax) or significant enough to enable new workloads.

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-05-26T22:21:33Z

Bmomjian: add goal of major release notes

0. Find branch date with query
git show --summary $(git merge-base REL_18_STABLE master)

1. 01raw ("01raw" is the file name I use)
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

2. 02trim
add "[DOC" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
cmd = "git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | wc -l";
cmd | getline lines;
close(cmd);

cmd = "git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -c \"^doc/\"";
cmd | getline doc_lines;
close(cmd);

if (doc_lines > 0)
{
# skip commit subject line
if (doc_lines < lines - 1)
doc = "[DOC & CODE]";
else
doc = "[DOC ONLY]";
}
}

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use text editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
I use MicroEmacs 4 [https://momjian.us/download/uemacs4_pg.mac macros] to do this.
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items and incompatibilities

3. 03comments
replace "[DOC " with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC //'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading space on commit text

4. 04reword
reword items

5. 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove trailing spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix </para><para for double-paras

6. 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
append 05tags
cat 05tags >> 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using text editor
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown file for gedit access

use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

7. 07order
order inside of groups
most important items first in each section
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

8. 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in text editor, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
checck names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters

9. PDF
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

10. Post release note URL to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org

11. Post blog after a few days of feedback

12. To show commits that were excluded, use:

<pre>
# Usage: command git_changelog_output release_notes

# Create a "!=" string to compare all commit hashes in the release notes.
PATTERN=$(awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {first = "Y";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
if (first != "Y")
printf(" && ");
first="N";
printf("$2 != \"" $2 "\"");
}
}' "$2"
)

awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
{
if ($0 ~ /^Author: /)
save_author=$0;
else if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
if ('"$PATTERN"')
{
print save_author;
print $0;
}
else
save_author="";
}
else if (save_author != "")
print $0;
}' "$1"
</pre>
and then run the script in #2 to add "[DOC" markers; email to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org.

13. Do the following after community feedbackscript, hopefully before beta1
delayed because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

The major release notes attempt to document every user-visible and user-impactful change. 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. Similarly, performance improvements are not mentioned in the release notes unless they are user-visible (e.g., new syntax) or significant enough to enable new workloads.

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-05-26T20:41:51Z

Bmomjian: mention beta 1

0. Find branch date with query
git show --summary $(git merge-base REL_18_STABLE master)

1. 01raw ("01raw" is the file name I use)
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

2. 02trim
add "[DOC" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
cmd = "git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | wc -l";
cmd | getline lines;
close(cmd);

cmd = "git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -c \"^doc/\"";
cmd | getline doc_lines;
close(cmd);

if (doc_lines > 0)
{
# skip commit subject line
if (doc_lines < lines - 1)
doc = "[DOC & CODE]";
else
doc = "[DOC ONLY]";
}
}

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use text editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
I use MicroEmacs 4 [https://momjian.us/download/uemacs4_pg.mac macros] to do this.
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items and incompatibilities

3. 03comments
replace "[DOC " with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC //'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading space on commit text

4. 04reword
reword items

5. 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove trailing spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix </para><para for double-paras

6. 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
append 05tags
cat 05tags >> 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using text editor
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown file for gedit access

use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

7. 07order
order inside of groups
most important items first in each section
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

8. 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in text editor, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
checck names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters

9. PDF
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

10. Post release note URL to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org

11. Post blog after a few days of feedback

12. To show commits that were excluded, use:

<pre>
# Usage: command git_changelog_output release_notes

# Create a "!=" string to compare all commit hashes in the release notes.
PATTERN=$(awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {first = "Y";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
if (first != "Y")
printf(" && ");
first="N";
printf("$2 != \"" $2 "\"");
}
}' "$2"
)

awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
{
if ($0 ~ /^Author: /)
save_author=$0;
else if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
if ('"$PATTERN"')
{
print save_author;
print $0;
}
else
save_author="";
}
else if (save_author != "")
print $0;
}' "$1"
</pre>
and then run the script in #2 to add "[DOC" markers; email to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org.

13. Do the following after community feedbackscript, hopefully before beta1
delayed because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

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. Similarly, performance improvements are not mentioned in the release notes unless they are user-visible (e.g., new syntax) or significant enough to enable new workloads.

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-05-20T21:17:23Z

Bmomjian: DOC marker

0. Find branch date with query
git show --summary $(git merge-base REL_18_STABLE master)

1. 01raw ("01raw" is the file name I use)
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

2. 02trim
add "[DOC" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
cmd = "git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | wc -l";
cmd | getline lines;
close(cmd);

cmd = "git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -c \"^doc/\"";
cmd | getline doc_lines;
close(cmd);

if (doc_lines > 0)
{
# skip commit subject line
if (doc_lines < lines - 1)
doc = "[DOC & CODE]";
else
doc = "[DOC ONLY]";
}
}

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use text editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
I use MicroEmacs 4 [https://momjian.us/download/uemacs4_pg.mac macros] to do this.
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items and incompatibilities

3. 03comments
replace "[DOC " with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC //'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading space on commit text

4. 04reword
reword items

5. 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove trailing spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix </para><para for double-paras

6. 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
append 05tags
cat 05tags >> 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using text editor
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown file for gedit access

use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

7. 07order
order inside of groups
most important items first in each section
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

8. 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in text editor, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
checck names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters

9. PDF
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

10. Post release note URL to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org

11. Post blog after a few days of feedback

12. To show commits that were excluded, use:

<pre>
# Usage: command git_changelog_output release_notes

# Create a "!=" string to compare all commit hashes in the release notes.
PATTERN=$(awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {first = "Y";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
if (first != "Y")
printf(" && ");
first="N";
printf("$2 != \"" $2 "\"");
}
}' "$2"
)

awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
{
if ($0 ~ /^Author: /)
save_author=$0;
else if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
if ('"$PATTERN"')
{
print save_author;
print $0;
}
else
save_author="";
}
else if (save_author != "")
print $0;
}' "$1"
</pre>
and then run the script in #2 to add "[DOC" markers; email to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org.

13. Do the following after community feedbackscript above to add
delayed because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

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. Similarly, performance improvements are not mentioned in the release notes unless they are user-visible (e.g., new syntax) or significant enough to enable new workloads.

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-05-20T21:16:32Z

Bmomjian: update doc

0. Find branch date with query
git show --summary $(git merge-base REL_18_STABLE master)

1. 01raw ("01raw" is the file name I use)
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

2. 02trim
add "[DOC" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
cmd = "git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | wc -l";
cmd | getline lines;
close(cmd);

cmd = "git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -c \"^doc/\"";
cmd | getline doc_lines;
close(cmd);

if (doc_lines > 0)
{
# skip commit subject line
if (doc_lines < lines - 1)
doc = "[DOC & CODE]";
else
doc = "[DOC ONLY]";
}
}

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use text editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
I use MicroEmacs 4 [https://momjian.us/download/uemacs4_pg.mac macros] to do this.
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items and incompatibilities

3. 03comments
replace "[DOC .*" with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC //'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading space on commit text

4. 04reword
reword items

5. 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove trailing spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix </para><para for double-paras

6. 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
append 05tags
cat 05tags >> 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using text editor
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown file for gedit access

use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

7. 07order
order inside of groups
most important items first in each section
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

8. 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in text editor, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
checck names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters

9. PDF
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

10. Post release note URL to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org

11. Post blog after a few days of feedback

12. To show commits that were excluded, use:

<pre>
# Usage: command git_changelog_output release_notes

# Create a "!=" string to compare all commit hashes in the release notes.
PATTERN=$(awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {first = "Y";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
if (first != "Y")
printf(" && ");
first="N";
printf("$2 != \"" $2 "\"");
}
}' "$2"
)

awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
{
if ($0 ~ /^Author: /)
save_author=$0;
else if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
if ('"$PATTERN"')
{
print save_author;
print $0;
}
else
save_author="";
}
else if (save_author != "")
print $0;
}' "$1"
</pre>
and then run the script in #2 to add "[DOC" markers; email to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org.

13. Do the following after community feedbackscript above to add
delayed because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

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. Similarly, performance improvements are not mentioned in the release notes unless they are user-visible (e.g., new syntax) or significant enough to enable new workloads.

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-05-20T21:16:16Z

Bmomjian: update doc

0. Find branch date with query
git show --summary $(git merge-base REL_18_STABLE master)

1. 01raw ("01raw" is the file name I use)
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

2. 02trim
add "[DOC]" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
cmd = "git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | wc -l";
cmd | getline lines;
close(cmd);

cmd = "git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -c \"^doc/\"";
cmd | getline doc_lines;
close(cmd);

if (doc_lines > 0)
{
# skip commit subject line
if (doc_lines < lines - 1)
doc = "[DOC & CODE]";
else
doc = "[DOC ONLY]";
}
}

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use text editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
I use MicroEmacs 4 [https://momjian.us/download/uemacs4_pg.mac macros] to do this.
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items and incompatibilities

3. 03comments
replace "[DOC .*" with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC //'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading space on commit text

4. 04reword
reword items

5. 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove trailing spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix </para><para for double-paras

6. 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
append 05tags
cat 05tags >> 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using text editor
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown file for gedit access

use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

7. 07order
order inside of groups
most important items first in each section
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

8. 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in text editor, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
checck names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters

9. PDF
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

10. Post release note URL to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org

11. Post blog after a few days of feedback

12. To show commits that were excluded, use:

<pre>
# Usage: command git_changelog_output release_notes

# Create a "!=" string to compare all commit hashes in the release notes.
PATTERN=$(awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {first = "Y";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
if (first != "Y")
printf(" && ");
first="N";
printf("$2 != \"" $2 "\"");
}
}' "$2"
)

awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
{
if ($0 ~ /^Author: /)
save_author=$0;
else if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
if ('"$PATTERN"')
{
print save_author;
print $0;
}
else
save_author="";
}
else if (save_author != "")
print $0;
}' "$1"
</pre>
and then run the script in #2 to add "[DOC" markers; email to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org.

13. Do the following after community feedbackscript above to add
delayed because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

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. Similarly, performance improvements are not mentioned in the release notes unless they are user-visible (e.g., new syntax) or significant enough to enable new workloads.

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-05-20T21:15:48Z

Bmomjian: add DOC ONLY, DOC & CODE

0. Find branch date with query
git show --summary $(git merge-base REL_18_STABLE master)

1. 01raw ("01raw" is the file name I use)
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

2. 02trim
add "[DOC]" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
cmd = "git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | wc -l";
cmd | getline lines;
close(cmd);

cmd = "git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -c \"^doc/\"";
cmd | getline doc_lines;
close(cmd);

if (doc_lines > 0)
{
# skip commit subject line
if (doc_lines < lines - 1)
doc = "[DOC & CODE]";
else
doc = "[DOC ONLY]";
}
}

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use text editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
I use MicroEmacs 4 [https://momjian.us/download/uemacs4_pg.mac macros] to do this.
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items and incompatibilities

3. 03comments
replace "[DOC .*" with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC //'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading space on commit text

4. 04reword
reword items

5. 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove trailing spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix </para><para for double-paras

6. 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
append 05tags
cat 05tags >> 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using text editor
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown file for gedit access

use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

7. 07order
order inside of groups
most important items first in each section
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

8. 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in text editor, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
checck names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters

9. PDF
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

10. Post release note URL to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org

11. Post blog after a few days of feedback

12. To show commits that were excluded, use:

<pre>
# Usage: command git_changelog_output release_notes

# Create a "!=" string to compare all commit hashes in the release notes.
PATTERN=$(awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {first = "Y";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
if (first != "Y")
printf(" && ");
first="N";
printf("$2 != \"" $2 "\"");
}
}' "$2"
)

awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
{
if ($0 ~ /^Author: /)
save_author=$0;
else if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
if ('"$PATTERN"')
{
print save_author;
print $0;
}
else
save_author="";
}
else if (save_author != "")
print $0;
}' "$1"
</pre>
and then run the script in #2 to add "[DOC]" markers; email to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org.

13. Do the following after community feedbackscript above to add
delayed because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

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. Similarly, performance improvements are not mentioned in the release notes unless they are user-visible (e.g., new syntax) or significant enough to enable new workloads.

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-05-20T20:32:26Z

Bmomjian: add hacker email

0. Find branch date with query
git show --summary $(git merge-base REL_18_STABLE master)

1. 01raw ("01raw" is the file name I use)
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

2. 02trim
add "[DOC]" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] / &&
system("git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -q \"^doc/\"") == 0)
doc = "[DOC]";

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use text editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
I use MicroEmacs 4 [https://momjian.us/download/uemacs4_pg.mac macros] to do this.
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items and incompatibilities

3. 03comments
replace "[DOC]" with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC\] *$//'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading space on commit text

4. 04reword
reword items

5. 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove trailing spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix </para><para for double-paras

6. 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
append 05tags
cat 05tags >> 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using text editor
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown file for gedit access

use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

7. 07order
order inside of groups
most important items first in each section
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

8. 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in text editor, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
checck names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters

9. PDF
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

10. Post release note URL to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org

11. Post blog after a few days of feedback

12. To show commits that were excluded, use:

<pre>
# Usage: command git_changelog_output release_notes

# Create a "!=" string to compare all commit hashes in the release notes.
PATTERN=$(awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {first = "Y";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
if (first != "Y")
printf(" && ");
first="N";
printf("$2 != \"" $2 "\"");
}
}' "$2"
)

awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
{
if ($0 ~ /^Author: /)
save_author=$0;
else if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
if ('"$PATTERN"')
{
print save_author;
print $0;
}
else
save_author="";
}
else if (save_author != "")
print $0;
}' "$1"
</pre>
and then run the script in #2 to add "[DOC]" markers; email to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org.

13. Do the following after community feedbackscript above to add
delayed because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

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. Similarly, performance improvements are not mentioned in the release notes unless they are user-visible (e.g., new syntax) or significant enough to enable new workloads.

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-04-30T04:12:21Z

Bmomjian: wording

0. Find branch date with query
git show --summary $(git merge-base REL_18_STABLE master)

1. 01raw ("01raw" is the file name I use)
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

2. 02trim
add "[DOC]" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] / &&
system("git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -q \"^doc/\"") == 0)
doc = "[DOC]";

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use text editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
I use MicroEmacs 4 [https://momjian.us/download/uemacs4_pg.mac macros] to do this.
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items and incompatibilities

3. 03comments
replace "[DOC]" with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC\] *$//'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading space on commit text

4. 04reword
reword items

5. 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove trailing spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix </para><para for double-paras

6. 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
append 05tags
cat 05tags >> 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using text editor
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown file for gedit access

use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

7. 07order
order inside of groups
most important items first in each section
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

8. 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in text editor, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
checck names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters

9. PDF
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

10. Post release note URL to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org

11. Post blog after a few days of feedback

12. To show commits that were excluded, use:

<pre>
# Usage: command git_changelog_output release_notes

# Create a "!=" string to compare all commit hashes in the release notes.
PATTERN=$(awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {first = "Y";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
if (first != "Y")
printf(" && ");
first="N";
printf("$2 != \"" $2 "\"");
}
}' "$2"
)

awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
{
if ($0 ~ /^Author: /)
save_author=$0;
else if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
if ('"$PATTERN"')
{
print save_author;
print $0;
}
else
save_author="";
}
else if (save_author != "")
print $0;
}' "$1"
</pre>
and then run the script in #2 to add "[DOC]" markers.

13. Do the following after community feedbackscript above to add
delayed because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

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. Similarly, performance improvements are not mentioned in the release notes unless they are user-visible (e.g., new syntax) or significant enough to enable new workloads.

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-04-30T04:11:40Z

Bmomjian: add editor macro link

0. Find branch date with query
git show --summary $(git merge-base REL_18_STABLE master)

1. 01raw ("01raw" is the file name I use)
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

2. 02trim
add "[DOC]" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] / &&
system("git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -q \"^doc/\"") == 0)
doc = "[DOC]";

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use text editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
I used MicroEmacs 4 [https://momjian.us/download/uemacs4_pg.mac macros]
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items and incompatibilities

3. 03comments
replace "[DOC]" with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC\] *$//'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading space on commit text

4. 04reword
reword items

5. 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove trailing spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix </para><para for double-paras

6. 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
append 05tags
cat 05tags >> 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using text editor
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown file for gedit access

use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

7. 07order
order inside of groups
most important items first in each section
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

8. 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in text editor, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
checck names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters

9. PDF
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

10. Post release note URL to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org

11. Post blog after a few days of feedback

12. To show commits that were excluded, use:

<pre>
# Usage: command git_changelog_output release_notes

# Create a "!=" string to compare all commit hashes in the release notes.
PATTERN=$(awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {first = "Y";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
if (first != "Y")
printf(" && ");
first="N";
printf("$2 != \"" $2 "\"");
}
}' "$2"
)

awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
{
if ($0 ~ /^Author: /)
save_author=$0;
else if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
if ('"$PATTERN"')
{
print save_author;
print $0;
}
else
save_author="";
}
else if (save_author != "")
print $0;
}' "$1"
</pre>
and then run the script in #2 to add "[DOC]" markers.

13. Do the following after community feedbackscript above to add
delayed because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

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. Similarly, performance improvements are not mentioned in the release notes unless they are user-visible (e.g., new syntax) or significant enough to enable new workloads.

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-04-23T15:08:07Z

Bmomjian: wording

0. Find branch date with query
git show --summary $(git merge-base REL_18_STABLE master)

1. 01raw ("01raw" is the file name I use)
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

2. 02trim
add "[DOC]" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] / &&
system("git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -q \"^doc/\"") == 0)
doc = "[DOC]";

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use text editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items and incompatibilities

3. 03comments
replace "[DOC]" with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC\] *$//'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading space on commit text

4. 04reword
reword items

5. 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove trailing spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix </para><para for double-paras

6. 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
append 05tags
cat 05tags >> 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using text editor
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown file for gedit access

use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

7. 07order
order inside of groups
most important items first in each section
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

8. 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in text editor, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
checck names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters

9. PDF
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

10. Post release note URL to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org

11. Post blog after a few days of feedback

12. To show commits that were excluded, use:

<pre>
# Usage: command git_changelog_output release_notes

# Create a "!=" string to compare all commit hashes in the release notes.
PATTERN=$(awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {first = "Y";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
if (first != "Y")
printf(" && ");
first="N";
printf("$2 != \"" $2 "\"");
}
}' "$2"
)

awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
{
if ($0 ~ /^Author: /)
save_author=$0;
else if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
if ('"$PATTERN"')
{
print save_author;
print $0;
}
else
save_author="";
}
else if (save_author != "")
print $0;
}' "$1"
</pre>
and then run the script in #2 to add "[DOC]" markers.

13. Do the following after community feedbackscript above to add
delayed because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

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. Similarly, performance improvements are not mentioned in the release notes unless they are user-visible (e.g., new syntax) or significant enough to enable new workloads.

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-04-23T15:06:53Z

Bmomjian: Add shell comment

0. Find branch date with query
git show --summary $(git merge-base REL_18_STABLE master)

1. 01raw ("01raw" is the file name I use)
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

2. 02trim
add "[DOC]" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] / &&
system("git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -q \"^doc/\"") == 0)
doc = "[DOC]";

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use text editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items and incompatibilities

3. 03comments
replace "[DOC]" with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC\] *$//'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading space on commit text

4. 04reword
reword items

5. 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove trailing spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix </para><para for double-paras

6. 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
append 05tags
cat 05tags >> 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using text editor
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown file for gedit access

use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

7. 07order
order inside of groups
most important items first in each section
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

8. 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in text editor, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
checck names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters

9. PDF
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

10. Post release note URL to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org

11. Post blog after a few days of feedback

12. To show commits that were excluded, use:

<pre>
# Usage: command git_changelog_output release_notes

# Create a "!=" string to check against all commit hashes in the release notes.
PATTERN=$(awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {first = "Y";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
if (first != "Y")
printf(" && ");
first="N";
printf("$2 != \"" $2 "\"");
}
}' "$2"
)

awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
{
if ($0 ~ /^Author: /)
save_author=$0;
else if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
if ('"$PATTERN"')
{
print save_author;
print $0;
}
else
save_author="";
}
else if (save_author != "")
print $0;
}' "$1"
</pre>
and then run the script in #2 to add "[DOC]" markers.

13. Do the following after community feedbackscript above to add
delayed because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

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. Similarly, performance improvements are not mentioned in the release notes unless they are user-visible (e.g., new syntax) or significant enough to enable new workloads.

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-04-22T11:55:39Z

Bmomjian: add hex commit hash pattern

0. Find branch date with query
git show --summary $(git merge-base REL_18_STABLE master)

1. 01raw ("01raw" is the file name I use)
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

2. 02trim
add "[DOC]" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] / &&
system("git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -q \"^doc/\"") == 0)
doc = "[DOC]";

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use text editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items and incompatibilities

3. 03comments
replace "[DOC]" with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC\] *$//'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading space on commit text

4. 04reword
reword items

5. 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove trailing spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix </para><para for double-paras

6. 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
append 05tags
cat 05tags >> 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using text editor
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown file for gedit access

use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

7. 07order
order inside of groups
most important items first in each section
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

8. 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in text editor, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
checck names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters

9. PDF
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

10. Post release note URL to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org

11. Post blog after a few days of feedback

12. To show commits that were excluded, use:

<pre>
# Usage: command git_changelog_output release_notes

PATTERN=$(awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {first = "Y";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
if (first != "Y")
printf(" && ");
first="N";
printf("$2 != \"" $2 "\"");
}
}' "$2"
)

awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
{
if ($0 ~ /^Author: /)
save_author=$0;
else if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[[[:xdigit:]]+\] /)
{
if ('"$PATTERN"')
{
print save_author;
print $0;
}
else
save_author="";
}
else if (save_author != "")
print $0;
}' "$1"
</pre>
and then run the script in #2 to add "[DOC]" markers.

13. Do the following after community feedbackscript above to add
delayed because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

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. Similarly, performance improvements are not mentioned in the release notes unless they are user-visible (e.g., new syntax) or significant enough to enable new workloads.

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-04-22T09:24:08Z

Bmomjian: "excluded"

0. Find branch date with query
git show --summary $(git merge-base REL_18_STABLE master)

1. 01raw ("01raw" is the file name I use)
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

2. 02trim
add "[DOC]" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[/ &&
system("git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -q \"^doc/\"") == 0)
doc = "[DOC]";

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use text editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items and incompatibilities

3. 03comments
replace "[DOC]" with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC\] *$//'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading space on commit text

4. 04reword
reword items

5. 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove trailing spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix </para><para for double-paras

6. 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
append 05tags
cat 05tags >> 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using text editor
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown file for gedit access

use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

7. 07order
order inside of groups
most important items first in each section
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

8. 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in text editor, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
checck names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters

9. PDF
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

10. Post release note URL to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org

11. Post blog after a few days of feedback

12. To show commits that were excluded, use:

<pre>
# Usage: command git_changelog_output release_notes

PATTERN=$(awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {first = "Y";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[/)
{
if (first != "Y")
printf(" && ");
first="N";
printf("$2 != \"" $2 "\"");
}
}' "$2"
)

awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
{
if ($0 ~ /^Author: /)
save_author=$0;
else if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[/)
{
if ('"$PATTERN"')
{
print save_author;
print $0;
}
else
save_author="";
}
else if (save_author != "")
print $0;
}' "$1"
</pre>
and then run the script in #2 to add "[DOC]" markers.

13. Do the following after community feedbackscript above to add
delayed because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

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. Similarly, performance improvements are not mentioned in the release notes unless they are user-visible (e.g., new syntax) or significant enough to enable new workloads.

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-04-22T07:23:38Z

Bmomjian: add "missing" script

0. Find branch date with query
git show --summary $(git merge-base REL_18_STABLE master)

1. 01raw ("01raw" is the file name I use)
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

2. 02trim
add "[DOC]" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[/ &&
system("git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -q \"^doc/\"") == 0)
doc = "[DOC]";

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use text editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items and incompatibilities

3. 03comments
replace "[DOC]" with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC\] *$//'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading space on commit text

4. 04reword
reword items

5. 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove trailing spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix </para><para for double-paras

6. 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
append 05tags
cat 05tags >> 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using text editor
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown file for gedit access

use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

7. 07order
order inside of groups
most important items first in each section
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

8. 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in text editor, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
checck names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters

9. PDF
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

10. Post release note URL to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org

11. Post blog after a few days of feedback

12. To show commits that were not included, use:

<pre>
# Usage: command git_changelog_output release_notes

PATTERN=$(awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {first = "Y";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[/)
{
if (first != "Y")
printf(" && ");
first="N";
printf("$2 != \"" $2 "\"");
}
}' "$2"
)

awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
{
if ($0 ~ /^Author: /)
save_author=$0;
else if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[/)
{
if ('"$PATTERN"')
{
print save_author;
print $0;
}
else
save_author="";
}
else if (save_author != "")
print $0;
}' "$1"
</pre>
and then run the script in #2 to add "[DOC]" markers.

13. Do the following after community feedbackscript above to add
delayed because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

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. Similarly, performance improvements are not mentioned in the release notes unless they are user-visible (e.g., new syntax) or significant enough to enable new workloads.

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-04-21T21:11:32Z

Bmomjian: PG 18 stable

0. Find branch date with query
git show --summary $(git merge-base REL_18_STABLE master)

1. 01raw ("01raw" is the file name I use)
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

2. 02trim
add "[DOC]" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[/ &&
system("git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -q \"^doc/\"") == 0)
doc = "[DOC]";

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use text editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items and incompatibilities

3. 03comments
replace "[DOC]" with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC\] *$//'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading space on commit text

4. 04reword
reword items

5. 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove trailing spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix </para><para for double-paras

6. 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
append 05tags
cat 05tags >> 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using text editor
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown file for gedit access

use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

7. 07order
order inside of groups
most important items first in each section
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

8. 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in text editor, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
checck names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters

9. PDF
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

10. Post release note URL to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org

11. Post blog after a few days of feedback

12. Do the following after community feedback
delayed because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

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. Similarly, performance improvements are not mentioned in the release notes unless they are user-visible (e.g., new syntax) or significant enough to enable new workloads.

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-04-19T18:44:46Z

Bmomjian: update "not included" text

0. Find branch date with query
git show --summary $(git merge-base REL_19_STABLE master)

1. 01raw ("01raw" is the file name I use)
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

2. 02trim
add "[DOC]" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[/ &&
system("git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -q \"^doc/\"") == 0)
doc = "[DOC]";

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use text editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items and incompatibilities

3. 03comments
replace "[DOC]" with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC\] *$//'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading space on commit text

4. 04reword
reword items

5. 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove trailing spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix </para><para for double-paras

6. 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
append 05tags
cat 05tags >> 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using text editor
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown file for gedit access

use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

7. 07order
order inside of groups
most important items first in each section
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

8. 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in text editor, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
checck names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters

9. PDF
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

10. Post release note URL to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org

11. Post blog after a few days of feedback

12. Do the following after community feedback
delayed because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

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. Similarly, performance improvements are not mentioned in the release notes unless they are user-visible (e.g., new syntax) or significant enough to enable new workloads.

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-04-19T18:08:42Z

Bmomjian: merge sentences

0. Find branch date with query
git show --summary $(git merge-base REL_19_STABLE master)

1. 01raw ("01raw" is the file name I use)
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

2. 02trim
add "[DOC]" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[/ &&
system("git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -q \"^doc/\"") == 0)
doc = "[DOC]";

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use text editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items and incompatibilities

3. 03comments
replace "[DOC]" with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC\] *$//'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading space on commit text

4. 04reword
reword items

5. 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove trailing spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix </para><para for double-paras

6. 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
append 05tags
cat 05tags >> 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using text editor
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown file for gedit access

use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

7. 07order
order inside of groups
most important items first in each section
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

8. 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in text editor, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
checck names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters

9. PDF
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

10. Post release note URL to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org

11. Post blog after a few days of feedback

12. Do the following after community feedback
delayed because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

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.

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-04-16T16:29:21Z

Bmomjian: add forks

0. Find branch date with query
git show --summary $(git merge-base REL_19_STABLE master)

1. 01raw ("01raw" is the file name I use)
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

2. 02trim
add "[DOC]" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[/ &&
system("git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -q \"^doc/\"") == 0)
doc = "[DOC]";

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use text editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items and incompatibilities

3. 03comments
replace "[DOC]" with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC\] *$//'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading space on commit text

4. 04reword
reword items

5. 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove trailing spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix </para><para for double-paras

6. 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
append 05tags
cat 05tags >> 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using text editor
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown file for gedit access

use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

7. 07order
order inside of groups
most important items first in each section
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

8. 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in text editor, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
checck names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters

9. PDF
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

10. Post release note URL to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org

11. Post blog after a few days of feedback

12. Do the following after community feedback
delayed because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

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.

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-04-16T15:55:25Z

Bmomjian: add performance mention

0. Find branch date with query
git show --summary $(git merge-base REL_19_STABLE master)

1. 01raw ("01raw" is the file name I use)
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

2. 02trim
add "[DOC]" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[/ &&
system("git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -q \"^doc/\"") == 0)
doc = "[DOC]";

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use text editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items and incompatibilities

3. 03comments
replace "[DOC]" with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC\] *$//'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading space on commit text

4. 04reword
reword items

5. 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove trailing spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix </para><para for double-paras

6. 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
append 05tags
cat 05tags >> 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using text editor
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown file for gedit access

use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

7. 07order
order inside of groups
most important items first in each section
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

8. 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in text editor, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
checck names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters

9. PDF
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

10. Post release note URL to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org

11. Post blog after a few days of feedback

12. Do the following after community feedback
delayed because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

While the major release notes include changes to the documented extension interface, it does not include all changes of interest to extension developers 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.

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-04-15T14:19:33Z

Bmomjian: append

0. Find branch date with query
git show --summary $(git merge-base REL_19_STABLE master)

1. 01raw ("01raw" is the file name I use)
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

2. 02trim
add "[DOC]" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[/ &&
system("git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -q \"^doc/\"") == 0)
doc = "[DOC]";

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use text editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items and incompatibilities

3. 03comments
replace "[DOC]" with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC\] *$//'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading space on commit text

4. 04reword
reword items

5. 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove trailing spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix </para><para for double-paras

6. 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
append 05tags
cat 05tags >> 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using text editor
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown file for gedit access

use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

7. 07order
order inside of groups
most important items first in each section
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

8. 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in text editor, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
checck names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters

9. PDF
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

10. Post release note URL to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org

11. Post blog after a few days of feedback

12. Do the following after community feedback
delayed because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

While the major release notes include changes to the documented extension interface, it does not include all changes of interest to extension developers because doing so would include too many items that would be uninteresting to the general audience.

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-04-15T14:18:13Z

Bmomjian: trailing spaces

0. Find branch date with query
git show --summary $(git merge-base REL_19_STABLE master)

1. 01raw ("01raw" is the file name I use)
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

2. 02trim
add "[DOC]" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[/ &&
system("git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -q \"^doc/\"") == 0)
doc = "[DOC]";

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use text editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items and incompatibilities

3. 03comments
replace "[DOC]" with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC\] *$//'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading space on commit text

4. 04reword
reword items

5. 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove trailing spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix </para><para for double-paras

6. 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
cat 05tags >> 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using text editor
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown file for gedit access

use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

7. 07order
order inside of groups
most important items first in each section
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

8. 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in text editor, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
checck names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters

9. PDF
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

10. Post release note URL to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org

11. Post blog after a few days of feedback

12. Do the following after community feedback
delayed because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

While the major release notes include changes to the documented extension interface, it does not include all changes of interest to extension developers because doing so would include too many items that would be uninteresting to the general audience.

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-04-15T14:16:26Z

Bmomjian: git command

0. Find branch date with query
git show --summary $(git merge-base REL_19_STABLE master)

1. 01raw ("01raw" is the file name I use)
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

2. 02trim
add "[DOC]" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[/ &&
system("git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -q \"^doc/\"") == 0)
doc = "[DOC]";

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use text editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items and incompatibilities

3. 03comments
replace "[DOC]" with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC\] *$//'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading space on commit text

4. 04reword
reword items

5. 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove lines with only spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix </para><para for double-paras

6. 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
cat 05tags >> 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using text editor
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown file for gedit access

use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

7. 07order
order inside of groups
most important items first in each section
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

8. 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in text editor, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
checck names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters

9. PDF
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

10. Post release note URL to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org

11. Post blog after a few days of feedback

12. Do the following after community feedback
delayed because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

While the major release notes include changes to the documented extension interface, it does not include all changes of interest to extension developers because doing so would include too many items that would be uninteresting to the general audience.

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-04-15T14:16:11Z

Bmomjian: update git command

0. Find branch date with query
git show --summary $(pggit merge-base REL_19_STABLE master)

1. 01raw ("01raw" is the file name I use)
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

2. 02trim
add "[DOC]" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[/ &&
system("git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -q \"^doc/\"") == 0)
doc = "[DOC]";

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use text editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items and incompatibilities

3. 03comments
replace "[DOC]" with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC\] *$//'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading space on commit text

4. 04reword
reword items

5. 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove lines with only spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix </para><para for double-paras

6. 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
cat 05tags >> 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using text editor
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown file for gedit access

use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

7. 07order
order inside of groups
most important items first in each section
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

8. 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in text editor, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
checck names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters

9. PDF
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

10. Post release note URL to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org

11. Post blog after a few days of feedback

12. Do the following after community feedback
delayed because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

While the major release notes include changes to the documented extension interface, it does not include all changes of interest to extension developers because doing so would include too many items that would be uninteresting to the general audience.

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-04-15T14:15:42Z

Bmomjian: no number on last item

0. Find branch date with query
pggit show --summary $(pggit merge-base REL_19_STABLE master)

1. 01raw ("01raw" is the file name I use)
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

2. 02trim
add "[DOC]" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[/ &&
system("git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -q \"^doc/\"") == 0)
doc = "[DOC]";

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use text editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items and incompatibilities

3. 03comments
replace "[DOC]" with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC\] *$//'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading space on commit text

4. 04reword
reword items

5. 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove lines with only spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix </para><para for double-paras

6. 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
cat 05tags >> 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using text editor
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown file for gedit access

use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

7. 07order
order inside of groups
most important items first in each section
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

8. 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in text editor, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
checck names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters

9. PDF
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

10. Post release note URL to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org

11. Post blog after a few days of feedback

12. Do the following after community feedback
delayed because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

While the major release notes include changes to the documented extension interface, it does not include all changes of interest to extension developers because doing so would include too many items that would be uninteresting to the general audience.

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-04-15T14:05:36Z

Bmomjian: typo

0. Find branch date with query
pggit show --summary $(pggit merge-base REL_19_STABLE master)

1. 01raw ("01raw" is the file name I use)
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

2. 02trim
add "[DOC]" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[/ &&
system("git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -q \"^doc/\"") == 0)
doc = "[DOC]";

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use text editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items and incompatibilities

3. 03comments
replace "[DOC]" with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC\] *$//'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading space on commit text

4. 04reword
reword items

5. 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove lines with only spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix </para><para for double-paras

6. 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
cat 05tags >> 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using text editor
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown file for gedit access

use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

7. 07order
order inside of groups
most important items first in each section
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

8. 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in text editor, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
checck names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters

9. PDF
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

10. Post release note URL to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org

11. Post blog after a few days of feedback

12. Do the following after community feedback
delayed because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

13. While the major release notes include changes to the documented extension interface, it does not include all changes of interest to extension developers because doing so would include too many items that would be uninteresting to the general audience.

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-04-15T14:05:20Z

Bmomjian: file name mention

0. Find branch date with query
pggit show --summary $(pggit merge-base REL_19_STABLE master)

1. 01raw ("01raw" is the file name I used)
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

2. 02trim
add "[DOC]" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[/ &&
system("git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -q \"^doc/\"") == 0)
doc = "[DOC]";

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use text editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items and incompatibilities

3. 03comments
replace "[DOC]" with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC\] *$//'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading space on commit text

4. 04reword
reword items

5. 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove lines with only spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix </para><para for double-paras

6. 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
cat 05tags >> 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using text editor
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown file for gedit access

use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

7. 07order
order inside of groups
most important items first in each section
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

8. 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in text editor, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
checck names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters

9. PDF
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

10. Post release note URL to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org

11. Post blog after a few days of feedback

12. Do the following after community feedback
delayed because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

13. While the major release notes include changes to the documented extension interface, it does not include all changes of interest to extension developers because doing so would include too many items that would be uninteresting to the general audience.

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-04-15T14:03:32Z

Bmomjian: PDF title

0. Find branch date with query
pggit show --summary $(pggit merge-base REL_19_STABLE master)

1. 01raw
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

2. 02trim
add "[DOC]" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[/ &&
system("git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -q \"^doc/\"") == 0)
doc = "[DOC]";

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use text editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items and incompatibilities

3. 03comments
replace "[DOC]" with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC\] *$//'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading space on commit text

4. 04reword
reword items

5. 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove lines with only spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix </para><para for double-paras

6. 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
cat 05tags >> 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using text editor
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown file for gedit access

use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

7. 07order
order inside of groups
most important items first in each section
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

8. 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in text editor, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
checck names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters

9. PDF
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

10. Post release note URL to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org

11. Post blog after a few days of feedback

12. Do the following after community feedback
delayed because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

13. While the major release notes include changes to the documented extension interface, it does not include all changes of interest to extension developers because doing so would include too many items that would be uninteresting to the general audience.

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-04-15T14:01:56Z

Bmomjian: number items

0. Find branch date with query
pggit show --summary $(pggit merge-base REL_19_STABLE master)

1. 01raw
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

2. 02trim
add "[DOC]" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[/ &&
system("git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -q \"^doc/\"") == 0)
doc = "[DOC]";

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use text editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items and incompatibilities

3. 03comments
replace "[DOC]" with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC\] *$//'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading space on commit text

4. 04reword
reword items

5. 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove lines with only spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix </para><para for double-paras

6. 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
cat 05tags >> 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using text editor
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown file for gedit access

use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

7. 07order
order inside of groups
most important items first in each section
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

8. 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in text editor, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
checck names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters

9. PDF output
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

10. Post release note URL to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org

11. Post blog after a few days of feedback

12. Do the following after community feedback
delayed because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

13. While the major release notes include changes to the documented extension interface, it does not include all changes of interest to extension developers because doing so would include too many items that would be uninteresting to the general audience.

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-04-15T12:15:40Z

Bmomjian: Add bullets

* Find branch date with query
pggit show --summary $(pggit merge-base REL_19_STABLE master)

* 01raw
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

* 02trim
add "[DOC]" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[/ &&
system("git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -q \"^doc/\"") == 0)
doc = "[DOC]";

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items
check for missed incompatibilities

* 03comments
replace "[DOC]" with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC\] *$//'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading spaces on commit text

* 04reword
reword items

* 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove lines with only spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix double-paras

* 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using ema
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown
cat 05tags >> 06groups
use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

* 07order
order inside of groups
most important items first in each section
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

* 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in editor, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters
* 09links
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

* Post release note URL to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org

* Post blog after a few days of feedback

* Do the following after community feedback
delayed because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

* While the major release notes include changes to the documented extension interface, it does not include all changes of interest to extension developers because doing so would include too many items that would be uninteresting to the general audience.

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-04-15T12:15:01Z

Bmomjian: add bullets

* Find branch date with query
pggit show --summary $(pggit merge-base REL_19_STABLE master)

* 01raw
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

* 02trim
add "[DOC]" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[/ &&
system("git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -q \"^doc/\"") == 0)
doc = "[DOC]";

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items
check for missed incompatibilities

* 03comments
replace "[DOC]" with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC\] *$//'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading spaces on commit text

* 04reword
reword items

* 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove lines with only spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix double-paras

* 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using ema
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown
cat 05tags >> 06groups
use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

* 07order
order inside of groups
most important items first in each section
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

* 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in editor, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters
* 09links
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

Post release note URL to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org
Post blog after a few days of feedback

* Do the following after community feedback
delayed because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

While the major release notes include changes to the documented extension interface, it does not include all changes of interest to extension developers because doing so would include too many items that would be uninteresting to the general audience.

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-04-15T12:02:31Z

Bmomjian: mention blog

* find branch date with query
pggit show --summary $(pggit merge-base REL_19_STABLE master)

* 01raw
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

* 02trim
add "[DOC]" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[/ &&
system("git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -q \"^doc/\"") == 0)
doc = "[DOC]";

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items
check for missed incompatibilities

* 03comments
replace "[DOC]" with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC\] *$//'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading spaces on commit text

* 04reword
reword items

* 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove lines with only spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix double-paras

* 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using ema
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown
cat 05tags >> 06groups
use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

* 07order
order inside of groups
most important items first in each section
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

* 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in editor, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters
* 09links
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

Post release note URL to pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org
Post blog after a few days of feedback

DO THIS AFTER COMMUNITY FEEDBACK
because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

While the major release notes include changes to the documented extension interface, it does not include all changes of interest to extension developers because doing so would include too many items that would be uninteresting to the general audience.

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-04-15T11:51:19Z

Bmomjian: add text about extensions

* find branch date with query
pggit show --summary $(pggit merge-base REL_19_STABLE master)

* 01raw
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

* 02trim
add "[DOC]" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[/ &&
system("git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -q \"^doc/\"") == 0)
doc = "[DOC]";

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items
check for missed incompatibilities

* 03comments
replace "[DOC]" with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC\] *$//'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading spaces on commit text

* 04reword
reword items

* 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove lines with only spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix double-paras

* 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using ema
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown
cat 05tags >> 06groups
use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

* 07order
order inside of groups
most important items first in each section
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

* 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in editor, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters
* 09links
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

Post release note URL to pgblog

DO THIS AFTER COMMUNITY FEEDBACK
because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

While the major release notes include changes to the documented extension interface, it does not include all changes of interest to extension developers because doing so would include too many items that would be uninteresting to the general audience.

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-04-15T11:47:56Z

Bmomjian: indent

* find branch date with query
pggit show --summary $(pggit merge-base REL_19_STABLE master)

* 01raw
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

* 02trim
add "[DOC]" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[/ &&
system("git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -q \"^doc/\"") == 0)
doc = "[DOC]";

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items
check for missed incompatibilities

* 03comments
replace "[DOC]" with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC\] *$//'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading spaces on commit text

* 04reword
reword items

* 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove lines with only spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix double-paras

* 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using ema
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown
cat 05tags >> 06groups
use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

* 07order
order inside of groups
most important items first in each section
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

* 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in editor, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters
* 09links
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

Post release note URL to pgblog

DO THIS AFTER COMMUNITY FEEDBACK
because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-04-15T11:46:46Z

Bmomjian: update git syntax

* find branch date with query
pggit show --summary $(pggit merge-base REL_19_STABLE master)

* 01raw
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

* 02trim
add "[DOC]" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[/ &&
system("git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -q \"^doc/\"") == 0)
doc = "[DOC]";

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items
check for missed incompatibilities

* 03comments
replace "[DOC]" with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC\] *$//'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading spaces on commit text

* 04reword
reword items

* 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove lines with only spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix double-paras

* 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using ema
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown
cat 05tags >> 06groups
use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

* 07order
order inside of groups
most important items first in each section
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

* 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in editor, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters
* 09links
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

Post release note URL to pgblog

DO THIS AFTER COMMUNITY FEEDBACK
because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-04-15T11:43:05Z

Bmomjian: update git syntax

* find branch date with query
pggit show --summary $(pggit merge-base REL_19_STABLE master)

* 01raw
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

* 02trim
add "[DOC]" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[/ &&
system("git show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -q \"^diff.*/doc/\"") == 0)
doc = "[DOC]";

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items
check for missed incompatibilities

* 03comments
replace "[DOC]" with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC\] *$//'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading spaces on commit text

* 04reword
reword items

* 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove lines with only spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix double-paras

* 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using ema
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown
cat 05tags >> 06groups
use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

* 07order
order inside of groups
most important items first in each section
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

* 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in editor, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters
* 09links
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

Post release note URL to pgblog

DO THIS AFTER COMMUNITY FEEDBACK
because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-04-15T01:55:49Z

Bmomjian: "editor"

* find branch date with query
pggit show --summary $(pggit merge-base REL_19_STABLE master)

* 01raw
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

* 02trim
add "[DOC]" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[/ &&
system("aspg pggit show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -q \"^diff.*/doc/\"") == 0)
doc = "[DOC]";

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items
check for missed incompatibilities

* 03comments
replace "[DOC]" with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC\] *$//'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading spaces on commit text

* 04reword
reword items

* 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove lines with only spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix double-paras

* 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using ema
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown
cat 05tags >> 06groups
use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

* 07order
order inside of groups
most important items first in each section
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

* 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in editor, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters
* 09links
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

Post release note URL to pgblog

DO THIS AFTER COMMUNITY FEEDBACK
because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-04-15T01:55:15Z

Bmomjian: Update URL

* find branch date with query
pggit show --summary $(pggit merge-base REL_19_STABLE master)

* 01raw
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

* 02trim
add "[DOC]" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[/ &&
system("aspg pggit show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -q \"^diff.*/doc/\"") == 0)
doc = "[DOC]";

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items
check for missed incompatibilities

* 03comments
replace "[DOC]" with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC\] *$//'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading spaces on commit text

* 04reword
reword items

* 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove lines with only spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix double-paras

* 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using ema
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown
cat 05tags >> 06groups
use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

* 07order
order inside of groups
most important items first in each section
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

* 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in ema, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in doc/src/sgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters
* 09links
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

Post release note URL to pgblog

DO THIS AFTER COMMUNITY FEEDBACK
because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

Creating Major Release Notes

2026-04-15T01:53:25Z

Bmomjian: first version

* find branch date with query
pggit show --summary $(pggit merge-base REL_19_STABLE master)

* 01raw
read src/tools/git_changelog
run src/tools/git_changelog
src/tools/git_changelog --master-only --brief --oldest-first --since='start-date'

* 02trim
add "[DOC]" text to indicate commits that changed documentation using:
<pre>
awk -F'[\\[\\]]' '
BEGIN {doc = "";}
{
if ($0 ~ /^20[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2} \[/ &&
system("aspg pggit show --name-only --oneline " $2 " | grep -q \"^diff.*/doc/\"") == 0)
doc = "[DOC]";

# Put label on empty line so the first commit text is always in
# the same place.
if (doc != "" && $0 == "")
{
print doc;
doc = "";
}
else
print $0;
}' "$@"
</pre>
add "AS OF" date
load relnote macro
ESC-X, source pg.mac
use editor macro F7 to delete each commit
F3/F4 for back/forward commits | F7 delete commit | F8 delete commit detail below cursor
delete commit with cursor anywhere in the commit text
check 01raw for missing items
check for missed incompatibilities

* 03comments
replace "[DOC]" with a blank line
sed 's/^\[DOC\] *$//'
add comments around commit tags
remove leading spaces on commit text

* 04reword
reword items

* 05tags
update for current git
spellcheck
remove <>&
grep '^[^<-][^:]*[<>&]'
remove lines with only spaces
remove double-blank lines
add </listitem><listitem>
add </para><para>
fix double-paras

* 06groups
copy previous major release notes to 06groups
Release date YYYY-??-??
add "AS OF" date
make groups using ema
remove text between <listitem>
remove acknowledgement <member>
chown
cat 05tags >> 06groups
use gedit text editor
add line numbers in editor
use Colbalt colors so current line is clearly highlighted
display overview map
^G to go to last search, search for "-----"
use triple-click to select whole lines
move items into groups
move items into incompatibilities

* 07order
order inside of groups
most important items first in each section
group similar items together
ideally the last item in a group will relate to the first item in the next group

* 08spell
2nd pass of spellcheck
remove HTML comments, authors
cat 08spell | grep -Ev '^(20[12][0-9]-|Author: )|commit_baseurl;[0-9a-f]*' | sed 's/ (.\+//g' > /tmp/x; ispell -H /tmp/x
add space between double dashes in XML comments
in ema, search for '^202.*--'
check contributor names for consistency
grep '([^(]*)$' 08spell | sed 's/^[^(]*(//' | tr -d ')'| sed 's/,/\n/g' | sed 's/^[( ]\+//g' | sort -u > /tmp/first
names spelled first/last and last/first
awk '{print $1,$2; print $2,$1}' /tmp/first | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '$1>1' > /tmp/last
install in /pgsgml
run src/tools/add_commit_links.pl
check PDF output for invalid characters
* 09links
run make postgres-US.pdf and look for non-output character warning

Post release note URL to pgblog

DO THIS AFTER COMMUNITY FEEDBACK
because
editing text with markup is hard
finding text with markup is hard
only the first mention gets a link, and reordering would mess that up
add markup, see doc/src/sgml/release.sgml
add links by tag
add only to first mention in adjacent item list
get tag list from release.sgml
use "<xref" for varname, applications
use "<xref" for command where text is only the command name
the rest need "<link linkend"
use "<link linkend" for struct
go over all items for general links
check invalid for "section", "chapter", and "???" text
use pipe to mark commit paras
indentation
<sect4 is indented by four spaces
use pipe to prefix <ulink> & </para>
indent itemizedlist
use ESC-tab to indent paras and word wrap
outdent para tags
word wrap
recheck contributor names for consistency
update TODO list

Commit Message Guidance

2026-04-06T16:45:56Z

Bmomjian: /* Tags: ":" */ update wording to say author and co-author are similar

The following is a DRAFT Request for Comment version of general guidance for PostgreSQL commit messages. The intent is:

# Keep it simple and stay reasonably consistent with past practice.
# Mirror similar guidance used by other open source projects, while maintaining the unique style of PGDG.
# Enhance the ability to machine-parse the commit messages for the purposes of acknowledgement (release notes, contributor recognition, various efforts to recognize contribution, etc.)

== General layout of commit message ==
<pre>
<commit message>
<summary line>
<blank line>
<narrative>
<para></para>
<blank line>
<para></para>
<blank line>
...
</narrative>
<tags>
<tag>
<tag>
...
</tags>
</commit message>
</pre>

== Notes ==
* The Postgres email subject has only 64 characters, so try to stay under this limit. For a template, use:
<code>|-- email subject length limit --------------------------------|</code>
* When possible, the <attribution> should be a cut-and-paste of the attributed person's list email "From:" field, with no alterations.
* The format of tagged lines should always be the following, and should begin at the start of a new line:
<tag>: <attribution> [(optional additional context in parenthesis)]
* If there are more than one attributed people for any given Tag type the "multiple tag lines" format should be used.
multiple tag lines:
<tag>: <attribution>
<tag>: <attribution>
* The ordering of the <attribution> data should be approximately from "most significant participant" to "least significant participant".
* Tagged lines should be after the narrative portion of the commit message.
* Verbose extra context regarding the tagged items should be included in the narrative portion. Short context may go in parenthesis on the tag line as shown.
* If the committer is also the sole Author, the "Author:" tag may be omitted and the committer is therefore assumed to be the Author.
* When including themself in an <attribution>, the committer should spell out their attribution exactly as it appears on the "From:" field of their emails to the list, as they would for any other attributed person. The use of "by me" or other references to themself as "me" is discouraged in the tags section, but is fine in the narrative section of the commit message.
* When referring to themself in the first person in the commit message of a commit authored or co-authored by someone else, the committer should include a reference to their own name following the personal pronoun.

== Tags: "<tag>:" ==
; Reported-by<nowiki>:</nowiki>
; Suggested-by<nowiki>:</nowiki>
: Used to credit someone who found the bug that the patch attempts to fix or suggested the feature that it adds.
; Diagnosed-by<nowiki>:</nowiki>
: Helped determine the root cause, but stopped short of authoring the patch.
; Author<nowiki>:</nowiki>
; Co-authored-by<nowiki>:</nowiki>
: Used to indicate the patch authors. If no "Author" or "Co-authored-by" is listed, the committer is assumed to be the author.
; Reviewed-by<nowiki>:</nowiki>
: Reviewers of the patch that performed a detailed analysis.
; Tested-by<nowiki>:</nowiki>
: Applied the patch and found it to have the desired effect.
; Bug<nowiki>:</nowiki>
: Bug number with number sign
; Discussion<nowiki>:</nowiki>
: A URL pointing to the mailing list discussion resulting in the patch. Ideally should point to a relevant message using the <code>https://postgr.es/m/MESSAGE_ID</code> URL format.
; Backpatch-through<nowiki>:</nowiki>
: Omit this tag for master-only commits. In the typical back-patching case where the patch goes into all branches from some oldest branch through master, write just the oldest branch's major version number, e.g. "15" (without the quotes). When patching a range of branches that doesn't include master, write oldest and newest branches, e.g., "13-15"; a single branch should specify "only", e.g., "15 only".

[[Category:Git]]

Commit Message Guidance

2026-04-06T13:18:56Z

Bmomjian: /* Tags: ":" */ add "committer mention"

The following is a DRAFT Request for Comment version of general guidance for PostgreSQL commit messages. The intent is:

# Keep it simple and stay reasonably consistent with past practice.
# Mirror similar guidance used by other open source projects, while maintaining the unique style of PGDG.
# Enhance the ability to machine-parse the commit messages for the purposes of acknowledgement (release notes, contributor recognition, various efforts to recognize contribution, etc.)

== General layout of commit message ==
<pre>
<commit message>
<summary line>
<blank line>
<narrative>
<para></para>
<blank line>
<para></para>
<blank line>
...
</narrative>
<tags>
<tag>
<tag>
...
</tags>
</commit message>
</pre>

== Notes ==
* The Postgres email subject has only 64 characters, so try to stay under this limit. For a template, use:
<code>|-- email subject length limit --------------------------------|</code>
* When possible, the <attribution> should be a cut-and-paste of the attributed person's list email "From:" field, with no alterations.
* The format of tagged lines should always be the following, and should begin at the start of a new line:
<tag>: <attribution> [(optional additional context in parenthesis)]
* If there are more than one attributed people for any given Tag type the "multiple tag lines" format should be used.
multiple tag lines:
<tag>: <attribution>
<tag>: <attribution>
* The ordering of the <attribution> data should be approximately from "most significant participant" to "least significant participant".
* Tagged lines should be after the narrative portion of the commit message.
* Verbose extra context regarding the tagged items should be included in the narrative portion. Short context may go in parenthesis on the tag line as shown.
* If the committer is also the sole Author, the "Author:" tag may be omitted and the committer is therefore assumed to be the Author.
* When including themself in an <attribution>, the committer should spell out their attribution exactly as it appears on the "From:" field of their emails to the list, as they would for any other attributed person. The use of "by me" or other references to themself as "me" is discouraged in the tags section, but is fine in the narrative section of the commit message.
* When referring to themself in the first person in the commit message of a commit authored or co-authored by someone else, the committer should include a reference to their own name following the personal pronoun.

== Tags: "<tag>:" ==
; Reported-by<nowiki>:</nowiki>
; Suggested-by<nowiki>:</nowiki>
: Used to credit someone who found the bug that the patch attempts to fix or suggested the feature that it adds.
; Diagnosed-by<nowiki>:</nowiki>
: Helped determine the root cause, but stopped short of authoring the patch.
; Author<nowiki>:</nowiki>
; Co-authored-by<nowiki>:</nowiki>
: Used to indicate the patch authors. "Co-authored-by:" should list individuals, particularly committers, who modified the patch but should not be listed as authors in the release notes.
; Reviewed-by<nowiki>:</nowiki>
: Reviewers of the patch that performed a detailed analysis.
; Tested-by<nowiki>:</nowiki>
: Applied the patch and found it to have the desired effect.
; Bug<nowiki>:</nowiki>
: Bug number with number sign
; Discussion<nowiki>:</nowiki>
: A URL pointing to the mailing list discussion resulting in the patch. Ideally should point to a relevant message using the <code>https://postgr.es/m/MESSAGE_ID</code> URL format.
; Backpatch-through<nowiki>:</nowiki>
: Omit this tag for master-only commits. In the typical back-patching case where the patch goes into all branches from some oldest branch through master, write just the oldest branch's major version number, e.g. "15" (without the quotes). When patching a range of branches that doesn't include master, write oldest and newest branches, e.g., "13-15"; a single branch should specify "only", e.g., "15 only".

[[Category:Git]]

Commit Message Guidance

2026-04-05T13:40:20Z

Bmomjian: /* Tags: ":" */ adjust Co-authored-by:"

The following is a DRAFT Request for Comment version of general guidance for PostgreSQL commit messages. The intent is:

# Keep it simple and stay reasonably consistent with past practice.
# Mirror similar guidance used by other open source projects, while maintaining the unique style of PGDG.
# Enhance the ability to machine-parse the commit messages for the purposes of acknowledgement (release notes, contributor recognition, various efforts to recognize contribution, etc.)

== General layout of commit message ==
<pre>
<commit message>
<summary line>
<blank line>
<narrative>
<para></para>
<blank line>
<para></para>
<blank line>
...
</narrative>
<tags>
<tag>
<tag>
...
</tags>
</commit message>
</pre>

== Notes ==
* The Postgres email subject has only 64 characters, so try to stay under this limit. For a template, use:
<code>|-- email subject length limit --------------------------------|</code>
* When possible, the <attribution> should be a cut-and-paste of the attributed person's list email "From:" field, with no alterations.
* The format of tagged lines should always be the following, and should begin at the start of a new line:
<tag>: <attribution> [(optional additional context in parenthesis)]
* If there are more than one attributed people for any given Tag type the "multiple tag lines" format should be used.
multiple tag lines:
<tag>: <attribution>
<tag>: <attribution>
* The ordering of the <attribution> data should be approximately from "most significant participant" to "least significant participant".
* Tagged lines should be after the narrative portion of the commit message.
* Verbose extra context regarding the tagged items should be included in the narrative portion. Short context may go in parenthesis on the tag line as shown.
* If the committer is also the sole Author, the "Author:" tag may be omitted and the committer is therefore assumed to be the Author.
* When including themself in an <attribution>, the committer should spell out their attribution exactly as it appears on the "From:" field of their emails to the list, as they would for any other attributed person. The use of "by me" or other references to themself as "me" is discouraged in the tags section, but is fine in the narrative section of the commit message.
* When referring to themself in the first person in the commit message of a commit authored or co-authored by someone else, the committer should include a reference to their own name following the personal pronoun.

== Tags: "<tag>:" ==
; Reported-by<nowiki>:</nowiki>
; Suggested-by<nowiki>:</nowiki>
: Used to credit someone who found the bug that the patch attempts to fix or suggested the feature that it adds.
; Diagnosed-by<nowiki>:</nowiki>
: Helped determine the root cause, but stopped short of authoring the patch.
; Author<nowiki>:</nowiki>
; Co-authored-by<nowiki>:</nowiki>
: Used to indicate the patch authors. "Co-authored-by:" should list individuals who modified the patch but should not be listed as authors in the release notes.
; Reviewed-by<nowiki>:</nowiki>
: Reviewers of the patch that performed a detailed analysis.
; Tested-by<nowiki>:</nowiki>
: Applied the patch and found it to have the desired effect.
; Bug<nowiki>:</nowiki>
: Bug number with number sign
; Discussion<nowiki>:</nowiki>
: A URL pointing to the mailing list discussion resulting in the patch. Ideally should point to a relevant message using the <code>https://postgr.es/m/MESSAGE_ID</code> URL format.
; Backpatch-through<nowiki>:</nowiki>
: Omit this tag for master-only commits. In the typical back-patching case where the patch goes into all branches from some oldest branch through master, write just the oldest branch's major version number, e.g. "15" (without the quotes). When patching a range of branches that doesn't include master, write oldest and newest branches, e.g., "13-15"; a single branch should specify "only", e.g., "15 only".

[[Category:Git]]

Job postings

2025-11-09T21:40:51Z

Bmomjian: /* Job Description */ simplify

Our job posting platform is a public, global mailing list. Once you send an email to the email address [mailto:pgsql-jobs@postgresql.org pgsql-jobs@postgresql.org], and a moderator approves it, your email will be sent to all subscribers of the mailing list. You should then start receiving private email replies to your job posting. (Replies should not go to the group email address.)

Additionally, a copy of your email is archived in the web at http://www.postgresql.org/list/pgsql-jobs. You can also use that link to view previous job postings to get ideas.

When crafting your email, clearly state the employment location in the subject line because this is a global email list. If remote work is possible, mention that in your email subject too. Attachments such as Microsoft Word or PDF files documents are discouraged; it's better to include the details of the job position in the email itself. You can, of course, include links to external sites in your email.

This is how your email should look:

<nowiki>
From: Joan Recruiter <recruiter@company.example.com>
To: pgsql-jobs@postgresql.org
Subject: Penguin DBA in Willsonville, WI

Worldwide Acme Inc. is looking for DBAs and is willing to relocate
penguins currently living in the Arctic.

Please send your resume and we will send helicopters to pick you up.
</nowiki>

====== Job Description ======

A few sentences or short paragraph describing your needs and the skills and experience you are seeking and optionally any urgency you are facing.

====== Required Skills ======

Skills absolutely required. If you specify a number of years experience in particular products/versions, please be sure to check and make sure that product/version has actually existed for that long.

====== Optional Skills ======

Nice-to-have skills

====== Location ======

Must the work be preformed at a specific location? If so are relocation costs covered?

====== Term ======

Permanent or temporary? If contract, how long?

====== Compensation ======

Annual salary for permanent positions. Hourly rate or fixed amount for contracts.

Job postings

2025-11-09T21:39:26Z

Bmomjian: /* Optional Skills */ simplify text

Our job posting platform is a public, global mailing list. Once you send an email to the email address [mailto:pgsql-jobs@postgresql.org pgsql-jobs@postgresql.org], and a moderator approves it, your email will be sent to all subscribers of the mailing list. You should then start receiving private email replies to your job posting. (Replies should not go to the group email address.)

Additionally, a copy of your email is archived in the web at http://www.postgresql.org/list/pgsql-jobs. You can also use that link to view previous job postings to get ideas.

When crafting your email, clearly state the employment location in the subject line because this is a global email list. If remote work is possible, mention that in your email subject too. Attachments such as Microsoft Word or PDF files documents are discouraged; it's better to include the details of the job position in the email itself. You can, of course, include links to external sites in your email.

This is how your email should look:

<nowiki>
From: Joan Recruiter <recruiter@company.example.com>
To: pgsql-jobs@postgresql.org
Subject: Penguin DBA in Willsonville, WI

Worldwide Acme Inc. is looking for DBAs and is willing to relocate
penguins currently living in the Arctic.

Please send your resume and we will send helicopters to pick you up.
</nowiki>

====== Job Description ======

A few sentences or short paragraph describing your needs and the skills and experience you are seeking and optionally the hiring time-frame or urgency you are facing.

====== Required Skills ======

Skills absolutely required. If you specify a number of years experience in particular products/versions, please be sure to check and make sure that product/version has actually existed for that long.

====== Optional Skills ======

Nice-to-have skills

====== Location ======

Must the work be preformed at a specific location? If so are relocation costs covered?

====== Term ======

Permanent or temporary? If contract, how long?

====== Compensation ======

Annual salary for permanent positions. Hourly rate or fixed amount for contracts.

Job postings

2025-11-09T21:38:56Z

Bmomjian: /* Location */ more text removal

Our job posting platform is a public, global mailing list. Once you send an email to the email address [mailto:pgsql-jobs@postgresql.org pgsql-jobs@postgresql.org], and a moderator approves it, your email will be sent to all subscribers of the mailing list. You should then start receiving private email replies to your job posting. (Replies should not go to the group email address.)

Additionally, a copy of your email is archived in the web at http://www.postgresql.org/list/pgsql-jobs. You can also use that link to view previous job postings to get ideas.

When crafting your email, clearly state the employment location in the subject line because this is a global email list. If remote work is possible, mention that in your email subject too. Attachments such as Microsoft Word or PDF files documents are discouraged; it's better to include the details of the job position in the email itself. You can, of course, include links to external sites in your email.

This is how your email should look:

<nowiki>
From: Joan Recruiter <recruiter@company.example.com>
To: pgsql-jobs@postgresql.org
Subject: Penguin DBA in Willsonville, WI

Worldwide Acme Inc. is looking for DBAs and is willing to relocate
penguins currently living in the Arctic.

Please send your resume and we will send helicopters to pick you up.
</nowiki>

====== Job Description ======

A few sentences or short paragraph describing your needs and the skills and experience you are seeking and optionally the hiring time-frame or urgency you are facing.

====== Required Skills ======

Skills absolutely required. If you specify a number of years experience in particular products/versions, please be sure to check and make sure that product/version has actually existed for that long.

====== Optional Skills ======

Nice-to-haves. These skills and experiences will differentiate the most competitive prospective applicants and improve their likelihood of successfully securing an offer.

====== Location ======

Must the work be preformed at a specific location? If so are relocation costs covered?

====== Term ======

Permanent or temporary? If contract, how long?

====== Compensation ======

Annual salary for permanent positions. Hourly rate or fixed amount for contracts.

Job postings

2025-11-09T21:38:19Z

Bmomjian: /* Required Skills */ more text removal

Our job posting platform is a public, global mailing list. Once you send an email to the email address [mailto:pgsql-jobs@postgresql.org pgsql-jobs@postgresql.org], and a moderator approves it, your email will be sent to all subscribers of the mailing list. You should then start receiving private email replies to your job posting. (Replies should not go to the group email address.)

Additionally, a copy of your email is archived in the web at http://www.postgresql.org/list/pgsql-jobs. You can also use that link to view previous job postings to get ideas.

When crafting your email, clearly state the employment location in the subject line because this is a global email list. If remote work is possible, mention that in your email subject too. Attachments such as Microsoft Word or PDF files documents are discouraged; it's better to include the details of the job position in the email itself. You can, of course, include links to external sites in your email.

This is how your email should look:

<nowiki>
From: Joan Recruiter <recruiter@company.example.com>
To: pgsql-jobs@postgresql.org
Subject: Penguin DBA in Willsonville, WI

Worldwide Acme Inc. is looking for DBAs and is willing to relocate
penguins currently living in the Arctic.

Please send your resume and we will send helicopters to pick you up.
</nowiki>

====== Job Description ======

A few sentences or short paragraph describing your needs and the skills and experience you are seeking and optionally the hiring time-frame or urgency you are facing.

====== Required Skills ======

Skills absolutely required. If you specify a number of years experience in particular products/versions, please be sure to check and make sure that product/version has actually existed for that long.

====== Optional Skills ======

Nice-to-haves. These skills and experiences will differentiate the most competitive prospective applicants and improve their likelihood of successfully securing an offer.

====== Location ======

Must the work be preformed at a specific location? If so are relocation costs fully covered or not? Be specific.

====== Term ======

Permanent or temporary? If contract, how long?

====== Compensation ======

Annual salary for permanent positions. Hourly rate or fixed amount for contracts.

Job postings

2025-11-09T21:37:30Z

Bmomjian: Trim unnecessary text

Our job posting platform is a public, global mailing list. Once you send an email to the email address [mailto:pgsql-jobs@postgresql.org pgsql-jobs@postgresql.org], and a moderator approves it, your email will be sent to all subscribers of the mailing list. You should then start receiving private email replies to your job posting. (Replies should not go to the group email address.)

Additionally, a copy of your email is archived in the web at http://www.postgresql.org/list/pgsql-jobs. You can also use that link to view previous job postings to get ideas.

When crafting your email, clearly state the employment location in the subject line because this is a global email list. If remote work is possible, mention that in your email subject too. Attachments such as Microsoft Word or PDF files documents are discouraged; it's better to include the details of the job position in the email itself. You can, of course, include links to external sites in your email.

This is how your email should look:

<nowiki>
From: Joan Recruiter <recruiter@company.example.com>
To: pgsql-jobs@postgresql.org
Subject: Penguin DBA in Willsonville, WI

Worldwide Acme Inc. is looking for DBAs and is willing to relocate
penguins currently living in the Arctic.

Please send your resume and we will send helicopters to pick you up.
</nowiki>

====== Job Description ======

A few sentences or short paragraph describing your needs and the skills and experience you are seeking and optionally the hiring time-frame or urgency you are facing.

====== Required Skills ======

Skills absolutely required. “Required” means show-stopping: Prospective applicants not presenting this background will not be considered under any circumstances and should not inquire further.

Note: If you specify a number of years experience in particular products/versions, please be sure to check and make sure that product/version has actually existed for that long. Really, it's embarrassing and insulting if you don't.

====== Optional Skills ======

Nice-to-haves. These skills and experiences will differentiate the most competitive prospective applicants and improve their likelihood of successfully securing an offer.

====== Location ======

Must the work be preformed at a specific location? If so are relocation costs fully covered or not? Be specific.

====== Term ======

Permanent or temporary? If contract, how long?

====== Compensation ======

Annual salary for permanent positions. Hourly rate or fixed amount for contracts.