11 The Hacker's Guide to the Galaxy
News and Discussions
Anyone can follow PostgreSQL news, learn about the features planned for the next release, and stay up-to-date with current events.
Plenty of interesting and useful content is published in various related blogs. For example, the planet.postgresql.org website aggregates all the English-language articles in one place. Many articles in Russian can be found at habr.com/hub/postgresql, including those published by Postgres Professional. For some of our articles, an English translation is available at habr.com/en/company/postgrespro/blog/. There are also dedicated YouTube channels, such as youtube.com/RuPostgres and youtube.com/PostgresTV.
There is also a Wiki project (wiki.postgresql.org), where you can find FAQs, training materials, articles about system setup and optimization, migration specifics from different database systems, and much more.
Almost 14 000 Russian-speaking PostgreSQL users subscribe to the “pgsql—PostgreSQL” channel on Telegram (t.me/pgsql), establishing an active and helpful community.
You can also ask your questions on stackoverflow.com. Do not forget to add the “postgresql” tag.
As for Postgres Professional news, they are published in its corporate blog at postgrespro.com/blog.
Mailing Lists
To get all the news firsthand, without waiting for someone to write a blog post, you can subscribe to mailing lists. Following the tradition, PostgreSQL developers discuss all questions exclusively via email.
You can find all the mailing lists at postgresql.org/list. Some of them are:
pgsql-hackers (typically called simply “hackers”), the main list for everything related to development
pgsql-general used to discuss general questions
pgsql-bugs for bug reports
pgsql-docs for documentation
pgsql-translators for translation-related discussions
pgsql-announce to get new release announcements
and many more.
Once you sign up, you will start receiving regular emails and will be able to participate in discussions if you wish. Another option is to browse through the email archive at postgresql.org/list or on our company’s website (postgrespro.com/list).
Commitfest
Another way to keep up with the news without spending too much time is to check the commitfest.postgresql.org page. Here the community opens the so-called commitfests for developers to submit their patches. For example, commitfest 01.03.2024–31.03.2024 was open for version 17, while commitfest 01.07.2024–31.07.2024 was related to the next version already. It allows the community to stop accepting new features at least about six months before the release and have the time to stabilize the code.
Patches undergo several stages: first, they are reviewed and fixed, and then they are either accepted, moved to the next commitfest, or rejected (if you are completely out of luck).
This way, you can stay informed about new features already included in PostgreSQL or planned for the next release.
Conferences
Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other cities in Russia host the annual international conference PGConf (pgconf.ru), attended by hundreds of PostgreSQL users and developers.
Besides, several Russian cities host conferences on broader topics, including databases in general and PostgreSQL in particular. We will name only a few:
HighLoad++ in Moscow and other cities (highload.ru);
CodeFest in Novosibirsk (codefest.ru);
DUMP in St. Petersburg (dump-spb.ru) and Ekaterinburg (dump-ekb.ru);
Stachka in Ulyanovsk (nastachku.ru);
Heisenbug in Moscow (heisenbug.ru);
Sysconf in Moscow (sysconf.pro).
Naturally, PostgreSQL conferences are held all over the world. The major ones are:
PGCon in Ottawa, Canada (pgcon.org)
PGConf Europe (pgconf.eu)
The list of upcoming events can be found at postgresql.org/about/events.
In addition to conferences, there are less official regular meetups, including online ones.