Re: RLS feature has been committed

On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 7:22 PM, Peter Geoghegan <pg(at)heroku(dot)com> wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 4:02 PM, Andres Freund <andres(at)anarazel(dot)de> wrote:
>> This patch has been pushed in a clear violation of established policy.
>>
>> Fundamental pieces of the patch have changed *after* the commitfest
>> started. And there wasn't a recent patch in the commitfest either - the
>> entry was moved over from the last round without a new patch. It didn't
>> receive independent review (Robert explicitly said his wasn't a full
>> review). It wasn't marked ready for committer. The intention to commit
>> wasn't announced publically. There were *clear* and unaddressed
>> objections to committing the patch as is, by a committer (Robert)
>> nonetheless.
>
> I have no reason to doubt your version of events here

Fortunately, you don't have to take anything on faith. This is a
public mailing list, and the exact sequence of events is open to
inspection by anyone who cares to take a few minutes to do so. You
can easily verify whether my statement that I asked Stephen twice to
hold off committing it is correct or not; and you can also verify the
rest of the history that Andres and I recounted. This is all there in
black and white.

> Should RLS be reverted, and revisited in a future CF?

IMHO, that would be entirely appropriate. I don't have any idea
whether the patch has remaining bugs, design issues, or security flaws
- and neither does anyone else since the normal review process was
bypassed - but I do feel that Stephen's feelings of being chastised
aren't worth the bits they are printed on. We're here to develop
software together, not to talk about our feelings; and the quality of
the software we produce depends on our willingness to follow a set of
procedures that are or should be well-understood by long-time
contributors, not on our emotional states.

It's difficult to imagine a more flagrant violation of process than
committing a patch without any warning and without even *commenting*
on the fact that clear objections to commit were made on a public
mailing list. If that is allowed to stand, what can we assume other
than that Stephen, at least, has a blank check to change anything he
wants, any time he wants, with no veto possible from anyone else?

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