Re: Interruptible sleeps (was Re: CommitFest 2009-07: Yay, Kevin! Thanks, reviewers!)

Greg Smith <greg(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> writes:
> Tom Lane wrote:
>> Well, yes they are. They cause unnecessary process wakeups and thereby
>> consume cycles even when the database is idle. See for example a
>> longstanding complaint here:
>> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=252129

> ... The only clear case where this is
> always a win is when the system it totally idle.

If you'll climb down off that horse for a moment: yeah, the idle case is
*exactly* what they're complaining about. In particular, the complaint
is that it's unreasonable to have Postgres running on a machine at all
unless it's actively being used, because it forces significant CPU power
drain anyway. That gets in the way of our plan for world domination,
no? If you can't have a PG sitting unobtrusively in the background,
waiting for you to have a need for it, it won't get installed in the
first place. People will pick mysql, or something else with a smaller
footprint, to put on their laptops, and then we lose some more mindshare.
I see this as just another facet of the argument about whether it's okay
to have default settings that try to take over the entire machine.

regards, tom lane