Re: pgsql: doc: fix wording describing the checkpoint_flush_after GUC

Hi,

On 2023-11-13 12:31:42 +0100, Alvaro Herrera wrote:
> On 2023-Nov-09, Bruce Momjian wrote:
>
> > doc: fix wording describing the checkpoint_flush_after GUC
>
> Hmm. Is this new wording really more clear than the original wording?
> I agree the original may not have been the most simple, but I don't
> think it was wrong English.

I think it was somewhat wrong (I probably wrote it) or at least awkwardly
formulated. "force the OS that pages .. should be flushed" doesn't make a ton
of sense.

OTOH, the new formulation doesn't seem great either. The request(s) that we
make to the OS are not guaranteed to be followed, so the "should be" was
actually a correct part of the sentence.

It probably should be something like:
On Linux and POSIX platforms <xref linkend="guc-checkpoint-flush-after"/>
allows to request that the OS flushes pages written by the checkpoint to disk
after a configurable number of bytes. Otherwise, these [...]

> I'm not suggesting to revert this change, but rather I'd like to prevent
> future changes of this type. Just saying it'd be sad to turn all the
> Postgres documentation to using Basic English or whatever.

+1 for the general notion.

Greetings,

Andres Freund