Pgpool-II patched five branches at once

Pgpool-II is the proxy a lot of PostgreSQL setups put in front of more than one server. It handles connection pooling, load balancing, and failover so applications are not talking to a single database host. On 1 October 2026 the Pgpool Global Development Group shipped maintenance releases for every branch it still maintains: 4.7.3, 4.6.8, 4.5.13, 4.4.18, and 4.3.21. Source and RPM packages are available from the project.

A five-branch drop is a signal to inventory, not a reason to jump to the newest major version on a Friday. Each line got its own patch. A cluster on 4.6 should take 4.6.8. A cluster on 4.5 should take 4.5.13. Moving major versions to “be current” changes behavior you may be relying on, and these releases are the minor ones.

Pgpool sits on the path of every query once you insert it. That makes a quiet proxy bug more expensive than a bug in a tool you run by hand. The practical check is which package is actually installed on the proxy hosts, not which version someone remembers standardizing on last year. Connection pooling also hides stale clients. After the upgrade, watch the pool for sessions that never come back, and for failovers that were already flapping before the patch.

If you are still on a branch older than 4.3, this release does not cover you. Those lines are outside the set the project just updated. That is the one case where staying put is not the conservative choice.