QA discussion: Early notifications based on upstream pre-releases?

[amotl]

Idea

Level up integration tests to use pre-release versions of 3rd party software artefacts (drivers, connectors, and friends).

Thoughts

This would be able to inform us about events like the recent pgJDBC hiccup earlier than before?

• Bump org.postgresql:postgresql from 42.7.4 to 42.7.5 in /by-language/java-qa #804

Problem

There is a slight CI configuration smell in the setup for Npgsql. Updating Npgsql versions currently needs a cooperative commit like 8cadf68, that adjusts the test matrix correspondingly.

Just merging a corresponding Dependabot PR would not cover that, so, in this case, it is just an indicator to perform an update manually.

Originally posted by @amotl in #837 (comment)