BostonGIS

In a previous article Using pg upgrade to upgrade PostGIS without installing older version I demonstrated a trick for upgrading to a newer PostgreSQL instance from PostGIS 2.2 - 2.whatever without having to install the older version of PostGIS in your new PostgreSQL service. Unfortunately that trick does not work if coming from PostGIS 2.1 because in PostGIS 2.2 we renamed a c lib function that backed sql functions in 2.1.

Fear not. There is still a way to upgrade from 2.1 to 2.5 without installing an older version of PostGIS in your new PostgreSQL instance. To do so, you need to add a step and that is to remove the functions in 2.1 that are backed by this renamed lib function. In upcoming PostGIS 3.0, we've added this function back and have it throw an error so that even coming from PostGIS 2.1, you can upgrade just the same as you do from later versions.