Re: equalPolicy() doesn't compare the permissive flag

On Thu, 2026-07-09 at 16:28 +0200, Andreas Lind wrote:
> While working on an unrelated RLS patch, I noticed that equalPolicy() in
> relcache.c doesn't compare the permissive field of RowSecurityPolicy. It
> compares polcmd, hassublinks, policy_name, roles, qual, and
> with_check_qual, but not permissive, so two policies that are identical
> in every other respect except their PERMISSIVE/RESTRICTIVE designation
> are reported as equal.
>
> equalPolicy() is used (via equalRSDesc()) by RelationRebuildRelation()
> to decide whether an open relation's existing row-security descriptor
> can be kept as-is across a relcache rebuild, or must be treated as
> changed. ALTER POLICY has no way to flip a policy's
> PERMISSIVE/RESTRICTIVE designation, but DROP POLICY followed by CREATE
> POLICY of the same name, roles, command, and quals, differing only in AS
> PERMISSIVE/RESTRICTIVE, hits this exactly: the stale descriptor would be
> kept, leaving the relcache out of sync with how the policy should now
> combine with others (PERMISSIVE policies are ORed together; RESTRICTIVE
> policies are ANDed with the rest).
>
> I wasn't able to construct a simple SQL reproduction:
> RelationRebuildRelation() (and thus this comparison) is only reached
> while the relation is still open (refcount > 0) at the moment its
> invalidation is processed. Closing and reopening the relation between
> statements -- the usual behavior -- sidesteps the bug, and a second
> session can't hold the relation open across the DROP/CREATE either,
> since both need AccessExclusiveLock. This looks analogous to
> ab6d1cd26eb, which fixed the same kind of omission in this function for
> the USING qual and likewise shipped without a test.

I don't know if the omission to check for identical PERMISSIVE or
RESTRICTIVE settings can lead to real problems, but I feel that it
violates the promise of the function. So I am +1 on this change.

Yours,
Laurenz Albe