Re: Yet another fast GiST build

On Tue, Jan 12, 2021 at 5:49 AM Heikki Linnakangas <hlinnaka(at)iki(dot)fi> wrote:
> I did a bit of cleanup on the function signature. The .sql script
> claimed that gist_page_items() took bytea as argument, but in reality it
> was a relation name, as text. I changed it so that it takes a page image
> as argument, instead of reading the block straight from the index.
> Mainly to make it consistent with brin_page_items(), if it wasn't for
> that precedence I might've gone either way on it.

BTW it would be nice if gist_page_items() had a "dead" boolean output
argument for the item's LP_DEAD bit, just like bt_page_items(). I plan
on adding some testing for GiST's opportunistic index deletion soon. I
may also add some of the same enhancements that nbtree got today
(following commit d168b666).

This feature was originally heavily based on the nbtree LP_DEAD
deletion mechanism (now called simple deletion), and I see no reason
(or at least no good reason) why it shouldn't be possible to keep it
in sync (except maybe with bottom-up deletion, where that it at least
isn't straightforward/mechanical).

--
Peter Geoghegan