Re: eliminate xl_heap_visible to reduce WAL (and eventually set VM on-access)

On Tue, Aug 26, 2025 at 4:01 PM Kirill Reshke <reshkekirill(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>
> Few comments on 0003.
>
> 1) This patch introduces XLHP_HAS_VMFLAGS. However it lacks some
> helpful comments about this new status bit.

I added the ones you suggested in my v7 posted here [1].

> 2) Should we move conflict_xid = visibility_cutoff_xid; assignment
> just after heap_page_is_all_visible_except_lpdead call in
> lazy_vacuum_heap_page?

Why would we want to do that? We only want to set it if the page is
all visible, so we would have to guard it similarly.

> 3) Looking at this diff, do not comprehend one bit: how are we
> protected from passing an all-visible page to lazy_vacuum_heap_page. I
> did not manage to reproduce such behaviour though.
>
> + if ((vmflags & VISIBILITYMAP_VALID_BITS) != 0)
> + {
> + Assert(!PageIsAllVisible(page));
> + set_pd_all_vis = true;
> + LockBuffer(vmbuffer, BUFFER_LOCK_EXCLUSIVE);
> + PageSetAllVisible(page);
> + visibilitymap_set_vmbyte(vacrel->rel,
> + blkno,

So, for one, there is an assert just above this code in
lazy_vacuum_heap_page() that nunused > 0 -- so we know that the page
couldn't have been all-visible already because it had unused line
pointers.

Otherwise, if it was possible for an already all-visible page to get
here, the same thing would happen that happens on master --
heap_page_is_all_visible[_except_lpdead()] would return true and we
would try to set the VM which would end up being a no-op.

- Melanie

[1] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/CAAKRu_YD0ecXeAh%2BDmJpzQOJwcRzmMyGdcc5W_0pEF78rYSJkQ%40mail.gmail.com