A bug Im encountering is fixed in a newer minor release of PostgreSQL, but I don want to upgrade. Can I get a patch for just this issue?
No. Nobody will make a custom patch for you so you can (say) extract a fix from 8.4.3 and apply it to 8.4.1 . That’s because there should never be any need to do that. PostgreSQL has a strict policy that only bug fixes are back-patched into point releases, as per the version policy. It is safe to upgrade from 8.4.1 to 8.4.3, for example. Binary compatibility will be maintained, no dump and reload is required, nothing will break, but bugs that might cause problems have been fixed. Even if you are not yet encountering a particular bug, you might later, and it is wise to upgrade promptly. You just have to install the update and re-start the database server, nothing more. Upgrading from 8.3 to 8.4, or 8.4 to 9.0, is a major upgrade that does not come with the same guarantees. However, if a bug is discovered in 9.0 then it will generally be fixed in all maintained older versions like 8.4 and 8.3 if it is safe and practical to do so. This means that if you’re running 8.1.0, upgrading to 8.1.