Re: pg_plan_advice

On Fri, Apr 3, 2026 at 2:20 PM Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> However, eyeing the calendar, I think the only options that are likely
> to be stabilizable before feature freeze are (1a) run the test scripts
> serially for test_plan_advice or (3a) throw test_plan_advice away.
> I know you don't want to do (3a) and I understand why not. How much
> will (1a) slow things down?

I don't know. For me, the speed of the regression tests is rarely a
bottleneck, and they run on my machine in about 12 seconds. But on
slow buildfarm machines, I'm guessing it's going to extend the runtime
significantly. But I also feel like if we've only seen one buildfarm
failure since the last round of stabilization, it might not be a
catastrophe if nothing further is done before feature freeze. In fact,
I think it might be *good*. Given the apparently-low failure rate that
we now have, it feels to me like we might want to run like this for a
month or even or two or three to get a clearer feeling for whether the
failure you saw is the only one or whether, perhaps, there are others.
Or even just how often this one happens. I mean, I'm also not that
opposed to having it made serial now if you really think that's
better. But what concerns me is I feel like we might inconvenience a
lot of people who really care about the tests running fast while at
the same time eliminating our ability to gather any more information
about the problem.

I mean, there is possibly an argument that we don't really need to
gather any more information about the problem; it does seem like we
understand what is going on here, and if we had a great, simple fix I
would probably just apply it and be done with it. But I also don't
quite understand why you're in such a rush. If we still feel like
running the tests serially is the best solution in a month, can't we
just do it then?

--
Robert Haas
EDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com