Re: patch to allow disable of WAL recycling

On Wed, Jul 18, 2018 at 3:22 PM, Jerry Jelinek <jerry(dot)jelinek(at)joyent(dot)com> wrote:
> I've gotten a wide variety of feedback on the proposed patch. The comments
> range from rough approval through various discussion about alternative
> solutions. At this point I am unsure if this patch is rejected or if it
> would be accepted once I had the updated man page changes that were
> discussed last week.
>
> I have attached an updated patch which does incorporate man page changes, in
> case that is the blocker. However, if this patch is simply rejected, I'd
> appreciate it if I could get a definitive statement to that effect.

1. There's no such thing as a definitive statement of the community's
opinion, generally speaking, because as a rule the community consists
of many different people who rarely all agree on anything but the most
uncontroversial of topics. We could probably all agree that the sun
rises in the East, or at least has historically done so, and that,
say, typos are bad.

2. You can't really expect somebody else to do the work of forging
consensus on your behalf. Sure, that may happen, if somebody else
takes an interest in the problem. But, really, since you started the
thread, most likely you're the one most interested. If you're not
willing to take the time to discuss the issues with the individual
people who have responded, promote your own views, investigate
proposed alternatives, etc., it's unlikely anybody else is going to do
it.

3. It's not unusual for a patch of this complexity to take months to
get committed; it's only been a few weeks. If it's important to you,
don't give up now.

It seems to me that there are several people in favor of this patch,
some others with questions and concerns, and pretty much nobody
adamantly opposed. So I would guess that this has pretty good odds in
the long run. But you're not going to get anywhere by pushing for a
commit-or-reject-right-now. It's been less than 24 hours since Tomas
proposed to do further benchmarking if we could agree on what to test
(you haven't made any suggestions in response) and it's also been less
than 24 hours since Peter and I both sent emails about whether it
should be controlled by its own GUC or in some other way. The
discussion is very much actively continuing. It's too soon to decide
on the conclusion, but it would be a good idea for you to keep
participating.

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company