Re: generate syscache info automatically

On 03.07.23 07:45, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> Here is an updated patch set that adjusts for the recently introduced
> named captures.  I will address the other issues later.  I think the
> first few patches in the series can be considered nonetheless.

I have committed the 0001 patch, which was really a (code comment) bug fix.

I think the patches 0002 and 0003 should be uncontroversial, so I'd like
to commit them if no one objects.

The remaining patches are still WIP.

> On 15.06.23 09:45, John Naylor wrote:
>> On Wed, May 31, 2023 at 4:58 AM Peter Eisentraut <peter(at)eisentraut(dot)org
>> <mailto:peter(at)eisentraut(dot)org>> wrote:
>>  >
>>  > I want to report on my on-the-plane-to-PGCon project.
>>  >
>>  > The idea was mentioned in [0]. genbki.pl <http://genbki.pl> already
>> knows everything about
>>  > system catalog indexes.  If we add a "please also make a syscache for
>>  > this one" flag to the catalog metadata, we can have genbki.pl
>> <http://genbki.pl> produce
>>  > the tables in syscache.c and syscache.h automatically.
>>  >
>>  > Aside from avoiding the cumbersome editing of those tables, I think
>> this
>>  > layout is also conceptually cleaner, as you can more easily see which
>>  > system catalog indexes have syscaches and maybe ask questions about
>> why
>>  > or why not.
>>
>> When this has come up before, one objection was that index
>> declarations shouldn't know about cache names and bucket sizes [1].
>> The second paragraph above makes a reasonable case for that, however.
>> I believe one alternative idea was for a script to read the enum,
>> which would look something like this:
>>
>> #define DECLARE_SYSCACHE(cacheid,indexname,numbuckets) cacheid
>>
>> enum SysCacheIdentifier
>> {
>> DECLARE_SYSCACHE(AGGFNOID, pg_aggregate_fnoid_index, 16) = 0,
>> ...
>> };
>>
>> ...which would then look up the other info in the usual way from
>> Catalog.pm.
>>
>>  > As a possible follow-up, I have also started work on generating the
>>  > ObjectProperty structure in objectaddress.c.  One of the things you
>> need
>>  > for that is making genbki.pl <http://genbki.pl> aware of the
>> syscache information.  There
>>  > is some more work to be done there, but it's looking promising.
>>
>> I haven't studied this, but it seems interesting.
>>
>> One other possible improvement: syscache.c has a bunch of #include's,
>> one for each catalog with a cache, so there's still a bit of manual
>> work in adding a cache, and the current #include list is a bit
>> cumbersome. Perhaps it's worth it to have the script emit them as well?
>>
>> I also wonder if at some point it will make sense to split off a
>> separate script(s) for some things that are unrelated to the bootstrap
>> data. genbki.pl <http://genbki.pl> is getting pretty large, and there
>> are additional things that could be done with syscaches, e.g. inlined
>> eq/hash functions for cache lookup [2].
>>
>> [1]
>> https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/12460.1570734874@sss.pgh.pa.us
>> <https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/12460.1570734874@sss.pgh.pa.us>
>> [2]
>> https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/20210831205906.4wk3s4lvgzkdaqpi%40alap3.anarazel.de <https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/20210831205906.4wk3s4lvgzkdaqpi%40alap3.anarazel.de>
>>
>> --
>> John Naylor
>> EDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com <http://www.enterprisedb.com>