Everybody wrote that 8.4 was released, so it's not a news now.

But. Starting from yesterday, my own PostgreSQL reports it's version like this:

# SELECT version();
                                                  version
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 PostgreSQL 8.5devel ON i686-pc-linux-gnu, compiled BY GCC gcc (GCC) 4.2.4 (Ubuntu 4.2.4-1ubuntu4), 32-bit
(1 ROW)

Which means: I can start new blog posts series.

In case you're not familiar – Waiting for X.X is a series of blogposts that I write when I see something cool committed to current PostgreSQL HEAD in CVS.

As for now, there aren't yet such things (mostly because 8.4 was branched out 2 days ago, or something like this). Instead, let's take a look at queue of patches (based on information about nearest commitfest:

• Auto-Partitioning – well – it's self explanatory – automatic partitioning.
• GRANT ON ALL IN schema – finally! a way to grant privileges to all objects
• Machine-readable explain output v2 – adding explain output format that would be easier to parse be computers (YES!)
• SE-PostgreSQL – (much) more secure PostgreSQL, with much more detailed privilege system
• Set PD_ALL_VISIBLE flag in HOT pruning – low level stuff, but if I read correctly it is next step to get covering indexes, and faster vacuum
• Synch Rep – synchronous replication
• Writeable CTEs – using CTE for writes. Could be used to encapsulate … RETURNING and reuse it for another write

(this is not all, I just noted some that I thought are most interesting from the point of view of typical database guy)

Of course there is no guarantee that above patches will be in 8.5, but at the very least we know what is being worked on.