PostGIS 1.3.4 is finally out the door

PostGIS 1.3.4 is finally out the door. This version has:

1. Support for 7.3, 7.4, 8.0, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 8.4 beta
2. GEOS 2.2.3, GEOS 3.0.3, GEOS 3.1 beta
3. Numerous bug fixes and speed improvements
4. Slightly better documentation
5. addition of function comments to help guide new users while in the psql or pgAdmin environment
6. One new function ST_AsGeoJSON to support javascript apis such as OpenLayers.

Some advanced GEOS functions such as ST_SimplifyPreserveTopology and ST_CoveredBy (both released in 1.3.3) will not be installed unless you are running GEOS 3.0 or above.

GEOS 3.0.3 also has numerous bug fixes such as a contains bug fix, compilation fixes to allow compiling on higher gcc. With that said, its highly recommended to upgrade to 3.0.3 as well.

Which minimal PostgreSQL version to support?

I suppose all side and core projects of PostgreSQL have to deal with this problem. Supporting numerous platforms and numerous versions of PostgreSQL is no easy undertaking and of course takes away resources that can be focused on bugs and new enhancements.

There is some talk recently in the PostGIS development team as to what minimal to support. I'm all for dropping 7.4.whatever and 8.0 for past releases (bug fix releases) and new major releases only supporting 8.2+ given our limited resources.

I'm curious what other PostgreSQL projects do and if PostgreSQL and other open source developers think this is wise.

How many PostGIS users out there are running something lower than 8.2. My general thinking is that there aren't that many and spending key resources on such a small crowd is just not worthwhile.