Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue - wiki

2008-04-08 Thread Alvaro Herrera
Bruce Momjian wrote:

 That private email list has grown into something official because I am
 more thorough about it than most.  If the community wants a more
 collaborative tool, they can create one or ask for additions to my web
 pages.  If I need to take my pages offline to help, fine.
 
 If the new system is 10x harder than I what I do now, I will probably
 just keep doing what I am doing and just not make it visible.  I can put
 some work into using the collaborative tool, but as I said before, we
 are going to need another 9x of effort.
 
 Personally I don't think either the March or May wiki pages are accurate
 enough, so that isn't a good sign.

To me, what this means is that you're the perfect person to be helping
making the wiki pages more accurate to cover all items that need
attention.  The fact that you seem to be fighting them (the pages), in
spite of the fact that everyone else has started using them, seems a bit
worrying to me.

I don't know how to measure how much harder using the wiki page is on
terms of the effort it takes you to update your pgpatches page -- so I
don't know about 10x, 9x or how many X's I have already used up.  But
while I certainly spent a fair amount of work to create the initial
version, the fact that they're up and running now means the work needed
to keep them up to date is not tremendous.

FWIW I've been asking patch submitters (privately) to add the patches
they submit to the May commitfest pages, and they've mostly done it
right away.  If you click the history link on the May page you can see
changes from Pavel Stehule, Teodor, Andrew Dunstan, Greg Start and Tom
-- so we already have a reasonably complete overview of what we need to
do on the next commitfest.  I don't expect this to be a one-time affair.

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue - wiki

2008-04-08 Thread Gregory Stark
Alvaro Herrera [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 FWIW I've been asking patch submitters (privately) to add the patches
 they submit to the May commitfest pages, and they've mostly done it
 right away.  If you click the history link on the May page you can see
 changes from Pavel Stehule, Teodor, Andrew Dunstan, Greg Start and Tom
 -- so we already have a reasonably complete overview of what we need to
 do on the next commitfest.  I don't expect this to be a one-time affair.

I think asking submitters to add their patches is a good idea and in fact
Heikki's suggestion of having the wiki be primarily driven by submitters is a
good idea. It gives people a central place to go back and check and find all
the collected reviews and CVS status of their work and keeps us honest.

I would like to suggest a few attributes we want for each patch:

1) Patch maturity (whether it was proposed as a design, WIP, or submission for
   committing).

2) Reviewers interested in working on the patch. I think it would help
   organize ourselves and make sure all the patches get covered. Also, it
   would help get people involved who are otherwise overtaken by more senior
   postgres hackers. Those hackers would probably focus on patches that were
   beyond the ability of more junior hackers and were otherwise getting
   ignored.

3) Committers working on integrating the code. No point in risking duplication.

My first instinct is to convert it to a table. But perhaps we could just stick
these attributes in the current format as sublist items under each major
bullet point.

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue - wiki

2008-04-08 Thread Alvaro Herrera
Gregory Stark wrote:

 I would like to suggest a few attributes we want for each patch:

[...]

 My first instinct is to convert it to a table. But perhaps we could just stick
 these attributes in the current format as sublist items under each major
 bullet point.

I agree -- having these attributes on sight would be good.  OTOH it
wouldn't be good if having them means the wiki is much harder to edit,
which makes me think that a table is not a good idea.  Keeping the whole
thing easy to edit is important to keep overhead low.

Perhaps we should offer an empty template at the top of the page so that
when a submitter wants to add a new patch, he puts the empty fields
there so that a reviewer/commiter needs only complete them.

For maturity I think we should have design, WIP, ready for final
review (as in: the submitter thinks this is ready to commit),
committed.  Having a status: committed means we no longer need to
move patches from one section to another.  (OTOH having a separate
section for committed patches is good because you can see at a glance
how the commitfest is progressing, so maybe this is not such a hot idea.)

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue - wiki

2008-04-08 Thread Bruce Momjian
Alvaro Herrera wrote:
  Personally I don't think either the March or May wiki pages are accurate
  enough, so that isn't a good sign.
 
 To me, what this means is that you're the perfect person to be helping
 making the wiki pages more accurate to cover all items that need
 attention.  The fact that you seem to be fighting them (the pages), in
 spite of the fact that everyone else has started using them, seems a bit
 worrying to me.

I have offered to remove my web site pages.

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue - wiki (was varadic patch)

2008-04-04 Thread Dave Page
On Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 4:55 PM, Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

  That seems like a *really* odd thing for one of the founders of the
  world's most advanced OSS DBMS project to say. It's all relational
  (which we do do pretty well) - we can add links to the wiki to threads
  in the archives, and anything posted from then on is self-maintaining
  (except when new threads are started - but even if each patch gets 5
  threads that's not a huge chore).
 
  I see no reason to go manually copying all 2k emails to the wiki.

 Well, I am waiting for someone to show me how it is done because I can't
 figure out a way.  Do it and I will gladly stop doing what I am doing.

We must be talking at cross purposes because I really cannot believe
you're asking me how to add a link to a wiki page :-o

Just in case though, the most simple way is to just add the URL with
square brackets surrounding it:

[http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2008-04/msg00131.php]

To use different link text just add it after the URL:

[http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2008-04/msg00131.php
Patch queue - Wiki]

To link to another wiki page, put the target page title in double
square brackets

[[Developer and Contributor Resources]]

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue - wiki (was varadic patch)

2008-04-04 Thread Greg Smith

On Fri, 4 Apr 2008, Dave Page wrote:


We must be talking at cross purposes because I really cannot believe
you're asking me how to add a link to a wiki page :-o


He wants to know how to automate turning an entire mbox file full of them 
into wiki markup, now how to do one at a time.  Other people have been 
running such tools for Bruce but he doesn't have one he can become 
comfortable with running himself yet.


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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue - wiki

2008-04-04 Thread Gregory Stark
Greg Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 On Fri, 4 Apr 2008, Dave Page wrote:

 We must be talking at cross purposes because I really cannot believe
 you're asking me how to add a link to a wiki page :-o

 He wants to know how to automate turning an entire mbox file full of them into
 wiki markup, now how to do one at a time.  Other people have been running such
 tools for Bruce but he doesn't have one he can become comfortable with running
 himself yet.

Well since we stuck with the mbox for the March commitfest there's no need to
do a batch migration. We'll just start with a wiki page for the May
commitfest. There are only a handful of lines to put in the May commitfest and
I think Alvaro's already put them in.

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue - wiki

2008-04-04 Thread Alvaro Herrera
Gregory Stark wrote:
 Greg Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 
  He wants to know how to automate turning an entire mbox file full of them 
  into
  wiki markup, now how to do one at a time.  Other people have been running 
  such
  tools for Bruce but he doesn't have one he can become comfortable with 
  running
  himself yet.
 
 Well since we stuck with the mbox for the March commitfest there's no need to
 do a batch migration. We'll just start with a wiki page for the May
 commitfest. There are only a handful of lines to put in the May commitfest and
 I think Alvaro's already put them in.

Yeah, the May commitfest page is already up.  I have been requesting
patch submitters to add their entries there.

The problem we had with the 2 emails was that we didn't have any
record of patches waiting for review -- a problem that we will hopefully
have only once.  I would expect our next release (this one) to not have
such a long queue of things, because of the whole commitfest idea.

I agree with what some are saying here: there's no automatic
notification when we add, remove or change status of patches, or other
issues.  I did voice my opinion that I thought a wiki page was not a
real tracker.  Hopefully, in working with the wiki we will gather enough
experience that we'll be able to decide _how_ we want our tracker to
work -- if we decide we want to switch from the wiki at all.

BTW, Greg Stark already dumped the patch queue into a wiki page some
time ago: http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/CommitFest:Bruce  Do you think
that's more useful than the other commitfest layout?  I don't.

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue - wiki

2008-04-04 Thread Bruce Momjian
Alvaro Herrera wrote:
 BTW, Greg Stark already dumped the patch queue into a wiki page some
 time ago: http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/CommitFest:Bruce  Do you think
 that's more useful than the other commitfest layout?  I don't.

No.

The bottom line is that I used to do this tracking in my own mailboxes
but people wanted to see what was outstanding so the web pages were
created.

Basically a Wiki takes 10x more time for me to modify something, so
unless I get another 9 people to do the same amount of work I do on
tracking, we are going to fall behind.  I am not willing to increase the
amount of time I already spend doing this.  Perhaps distributed over the
community there will be 9x more time spent on tracking, but I doubt it.

I think ultimately we are going to have to remove the patches email list
and require patch submitters to add their patches to a patch tracker. 
Then all patch discussion will happen on hackers and in the patch
tracker.  I will continue to gather TODO emails, but those are not
time-sensitive and few people seem to want to work on that.

Frankly, few people seem to want to apply patches either.  :-)  Even
with two patch queue web sites, Tom is doing the bulk of the work.  I
kept some of the easy ones in the queue for a long time hoping people
would at least take those, but no one did.  I am doing them at this
point because we want this commit fest to be over.

Also frankly, I feel I am hearing, Oh, we want to help but we don't
know what to do, and when you show people what to do, they don't help.

Yes, I am disapointed.  If someone can explain why I shouldn't feel
disapointed, I would love to hear it.

If you want I will take my web pages offline and the community can see
how it does with tracking.   I will keep my mbox current just in case.

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue - wiki

2008-04-04 Thread Gregory Stark

Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 Basically a Wiki takes 10x more time for me to modify something, so
 unless I get another 9 people to do the same amount of work I do on
 tracking, we are going to fall behind.  I am not willing to increase the
 amount of time I already spend doing this.  Perhaps distributed over the
 community there will be 9x more time spent on tracking, but I doubt it.

On a busy day we might get 5 patches submitted or updated. That's five lines
of text to add or edit. The hard part is reading the email and figuring out
what status the patch is in. Not coincidentally the lack of that info is also
why your list isn't very helpful.

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue - wiki

2008-04-04 Thread Tom Lane
Gregory Stark [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 Basically a Wiki takes 10x more time for me to modify something, so
 unless I get another 9 people to do the same amount of work I do on
 tracking, we are going to fall behind.  I am not willing to increase the
 amount of time I already spend doing this.  Perhaps distributed over the
 community there will be 9x more time spent on tracking, but I doubt it.

 On a busy day we might get 5 patches submitted or updated. That's five lines
 of text to add or edit.

I think what Bruce is really complaining about here is that he's got
years worth of development in his current infrastructure, and so it only
costs him a few seconds and keystrokes to push stuff into his existing
patch queue; while there's no such shortcuts for the wiki.  Which is a
fair complaint, but it's hardly insoluble.

 The hard part is reading the email and figuring out
 what status the patch is in.

Certainly.  What we've got to do is make sure that after someone has
made that decision, it doesn't cost them a couple of minutes of drudgery
to look up the appropriate email-archives URL and push it into the wiki
page (probably with a comment).  I can't imagine that this is terribly
difficult, but web page scripting isn't one of my strengths ...

regards, tom lane

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue - wiki

2008-04-04 Thread Bruce Momjian
Tom Lane wrote:
 Gregory Stark [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
  Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
  Basically a Wiki takes 10x more time for me to modify something, so
  unless I get another 9 people to do the same amount of work I do on
  tracking, we are going to fall behind.  I am not willing to increase the
  amount of time I already spend doing this.  Perhaps distributed over the
  community there will be 9x more time spent on tracking, but I doubt it.
 
  On a busy day we might get 5 patches submitted or updated. That's five lines
  of text to add or edit.
 
 I think what Bruce is really complaining about here is that he's got
 years worth of development in his current infrastructure, and so it only
 costs him a few seconds and keystrokes to push stuff into his existing
 patch queue; while there's no such shortcuts for the wiki.  Which is a
 fair complaint, but it's hardly insoluble.

My infrastructure really took no time to construct because it is just
pushing email around.  I don't care if I have to scrap it.

Basically it is an outgrowth of something I already do, and that is read
the email stream.  My guess is that no matter what we set up I am going
to want to track things others don't want to see so I am still going to
have my private list of emails I want to address.

That private email list has grown into something official because I am
more thorough about it than most.  If the community wants a more
collaborative tool, they can create one or ask for additions to my web
pages.  If I need to take my pages offline to help, fine.

If the new system is 10x harder than I what I do now, I will probably
just keep doing what I am doing and just not make it visible.  I can put
some work into using the collaborative tool, but as I said before, we
are going to need another 9x of effort.

Personally I don't think either the March or May wiki pages are accurate
enough, so that isn't a good sign.

FYI, others can add to the patch queue now; the email address is at the
top of each page.

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue - wiki

2008-04-04 Thread Gregory Stark
Tom Lane [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 Gregory Stark [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 The hard part is reading the email and figuring out
 what status the patch is in.

 Certainly.  What we've got to do is make sure that after someone has
 made that decision, it doesn't cost them a couple of minutes of drudgery
 to look up the appropriate email-archives URL and push it into the wiki
 page (probably with a comment).  I can't imagine that this is terribly
 difficult, but web page scripting isn't one of my strengths ...

Hm, the way you describe this I fear we would get the list of every individual
email on the topic. What I think we want is usually to add a link to an
existing entry and update the status. That pretty much does require going to
the page and finding the entry in question.

It probably would be neat if the email footer thingy added a url to each email
it distributed via the lists pointing to the permanent message-id-based url in
the archives for that message. Then at least you would have that handy.



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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue - wiki

2008-04-04 Thread Tom Lane
Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 I think ultimately we are going to have to remove the patches email list
 and require patch submitters to add their patches to a patch tracker. 

That's outright silly.  The email list and archives are a critical part
of what we do, because they provide a historical record.  Nor is raising
the bar for submitting patches a good idea.

The patch queue is by definition transient --- nobody particularly cares
about what its past state was, as shown by the fact that you've gotten
along for years with an implementation that's incapable of recalling
past state.  (Now I do like the idea that a wiki-based patch queue would
retain some history, but I'm not expecting that it'll archive every
change indefinitely.)

The right way to think about and design the patch queue is as a changing
index into the archives.  One of the things I seriously dislike about
your current implementation is that it ignores the archives.  You've
whacked us around two or three times this month developing permanent
and then really permanent URLs, but that whole thing is wrong from the
get-go.  You are not the keeper of the project's historical record.
The patch queue should be trafficking in URLs that do point into the
historical record.

 Frankly, few people seem to want to apply patches either.  :-)

Yeah, tell me about it :-(

regards, tom lane

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue - wiki

2008-04-04 Thread Bruce Momjian
Tom Lane wrote:
 The patch queue is by definition transient --- nobody particularly cares
 about what its past state was, as shown by the fact that you've gotten
 along for years with an implementation that's incapable of recalling
 past state.  (Now I do like the idea that a wiki-based patch queue would
 retain some history, but I'm not expecting that it'll archive every
 change indefinitely.)
 
 The right way to think about and design the patch queue is as a changing
 index into the archives.  One of the things I seriously dislike about
 your current implementation is that it ignores the archives.  You've
 whacked us around two or three times this month developing permanent
 and then really permanent URLs, but that whole thing is wrong from the
 get-go.  You are not the keeper of the project's historical record.
 The patch queue should be trafficking in URLs that do point into the
 historical record.

Sure, it would be nice if an email link could jump right into the
archives, but until we have a way to get to the archives via a
message-id, I know of know way to automate that.

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue - wiki

2008-04-04 Thread Joshua D. Drake
On Fri, 04 Apr 2008 22:37:17 -0400
Tom Lane [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
  I think ultimately we are going to have to remove the patches email
  list and require patch submitters to add their patches to a patch
  tracker. 
 
 That's outright silly.  The email list and archives are a critical
 part of what we do, because they provide a historical record.  Nor is
 raising the bar for submitting patches a good idea.

Command Prompt uses a tool that allows us to transform emails to
tickets via Trac. It is not perfect but it works for us. It has two
modes, autocreate and not.

With autocreate every email that hits the list is automatically a
ticket. 

Without autocreate you must put: @trac create into the message body for
a ticket to be created.

The flow works like this:

email [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  email-tracman-trac-list

Where the email is intercepted by tracman, which reads the email to see
if it is already a ticket, if so the ticket within trac gets updated
and then the email is released to the listserv.

If the email is not a ticket (and autocreate is on), tracman intercepts
the email, creates a ticket in trac, rewrites the subject of the email
to have the ticket number and releases the ticket to the list serv.

Further if you want to update a ticket via the web interface to trac
you can and it will also correctly deal with list traffic.

The following commands are supported:

@trac create : creates a ticket

@trac assign : takes a second argument which allows you to assign to a
person

@trac close : closes a ticket

In the current infrastructure the missing things for CMDs workflow is:

1. Attachments if sent via email stay a part of the email, if they are
attached via trac, they stay part of the ticket. So you can actually
have two sources of attachments.

2. There is no merge capability. At some point we want to be able to
say this:

@trac merge 27

And the email getting intercepted would automatically merge into ticket
27.

I am not saying we should use this for the project. I am not even
saying it is a good tool for the project. I am saying that if some
hackers want to play with the idea for a patch queue using it, I would
be happy to provide resource to that. I would also be willing to
provide resources to make reasonable modifications to tracman to allow
it to work for our environment.

The key to this is, with very little effort we would have:

 * Proper attachment capability (gets saved into postgresql) 
 * A single source for communication about patches
   * If we add merge, we can even forward an email from hackers that is
relevant and merge it into a patch (which is a ticket).
 * Always see what the latest patch is because the ticket will have a
patch and timestamp associated with when the patch came in
 * Have a wiki that can associate explicitly with the tickets/patches

And if we ever change to mercurial, svn or git, we can use Trac as the
front end and not only have a wiki,tickets,patches but also source tree
references including changesets etc...

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake







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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue - wiki

2008-04-04 Thread Marc G. Fournier
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1



- --On Saturday, April 05, 2008 03:37:08 +0100 Gregory Stark 
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 It probably would be neat if the email footer thingy added a url to each email
 it distributed via the lists pointing to the permanent message-id-based url in
 the archives for that message. Then at least you would have that handy.

Actually, I think it was Magnus that asked me about this (or similar) ... I can 
add either an X-header, or something in the body, that includes the Message-Id, 
as ppl desire it ...


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Email . [EMAIL PROTECTED]  MSN . [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Yahoo . yscrappy   Skype: hub.orgICQ . 7615664
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Version: GnuPG v2.0.8 (FreeBSD)

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue - wiki (was varadic patch)

2008-04-03 Thread Dave Page
On Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 12:35 AM, Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  It is not clear to me how a wiki can be easily created for 2k emails and
  then maintained in a reasonable way, or how emails can be added to it
  easily.

That seems like a *really* odd thing for one of the founders of the
world's most advanced OSS DBMS project to say. It's all relational
(which we do do pretty well) - we can add links to the wiki to threads
in the archives, and anything posted from then on is self-maintaining
(except when new threads are started - but even if each patch gets 5
threads that's not a huge chore).

I see no reason to go manually copying all 2k emails to the wiki.


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PostgreSQL UK 2008 Conference: http://www.postgresql.org.uk

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue - wiki (was varadic patch)

2008-04-03 Thread Aidan Van Dyk
The one concern I have with the way the last commitfest went (and I say
this as strictly an observer), there was no discussion on anything.

Now, I know that discussion happened, but it happened somewhere, in some
web-forum, in a community that seems to generally promote mailing lists
as the preferred method of discussion.

As an observer, who generally doesn't have much input code wise, but
occasionally might have an observation as a user, *I* would love to see
the commitfest patch-queue be something pretty simple, along the
lines of a big list of:

1) item name, submission date, author
2a) item intention (maybe a see $MSGID)
2b) item (see $MSGID)
3) status summary (in discussion, applied, needs $improvements,
rejected, see $MSGID

Note I said item because it appears as if the consensus is that the
commit-fest has to deal with more than just patches, but also proposals,
and fork-in-the-road details.

And no, I don't think it should included the 2K emails.  It should can
the $N items needing to be dealt with, and a list of pointers to
messages (which generally lead to threads), with a simple status
list/summary for each one (again with pointers to $MSGID where specific
information might be needed).

Basically, I would like to see the patch queue be more a
summary/pointer of/to discussion, then some web forum where the
discussion happens.  And I would like the mailling lists be where the
discussion of items in the patch queue happens.

But all this is the opinion of an observing devellopper, not involved in
any of the heavy-lifting, but as someone who would like to keep an eye
on what patches are presented, and their strengths/deficiencies, so that
when I present my first patch/proposal, hopefully I can avoid most of
the pitfalls.

But don't cater to me.  Cater to Tom and Bruce, who are the ones who
actually use whatever is in place.  Since they are the ones doing the
work, I have to accept (or ignore) whatever system they use.

a.

* Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] [080402 19:36]:
 
 It is not clear to me how a wiki can be easily created for 2k emails and
 then maintained in a reasonable way, or how emails can be added to it
 easily.
 
 There are several steps:
 
   o  getting those 2k emails to start the commit fest
   o  getting them into a wiki in a way that is fast/efficient
   o  updating the wiki for changes efficiently
 
 Keep in mind the patch emails are pretty dynamic.  As you get closer to
 the end of the commit fest, the wiki is easier because the list of open
 items becomes more stable.
 
 I am able to give others the ability to add, move, and delete emails in
 my patch queue, if desired.
 
 If people want to use the wiki, go ahead --- this would be one less job
 for me to do.

-- 
Aidan Van Dyk Create like a god,
[EMAIL PROTECTED]   command like a king,
http://www.highrise.ca/   work like a slave.


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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue - wiki (was varadic patch)

2008-04-03 Thread Tom Lane
Aidan Van Dyk [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 The one concern I have with the way the last commitfest went (and I say
 this as strictly an observer), there was no discussion on anything.

Umm ... in the first place, the fest isn't over yet.  In the second
place, the reason you haven't seen much discussion is that we've been
working primarily on the stuff that could be committed without much
discussion.  That underbrush has mostly been cleared away at this point,
and we're starting to get down to the stuff that actually will need
extended discussion.  That should definitely happen on this list.

The remaining open issues are listed here:
http://momjian.us/cgi-bin/pgpatches
Feel free to start talking about any of them ...

regards, tom lane

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue - wiki (was varadic patch)

2008-04-03 Thread Bruce Momjian
Dave Page wrote:
 On Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 12:35 AM, Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
   It is not clear to me how a wiki can be easily created for 2k emails and
   then maintained in a reasonable way, or how emails can be added to it
   easily.
 
 That seems like a *really* odd thing for one of the founders of the
 world's most advanced OSS DBMS project to say. It's all relational
 (which we do do pretty well) - we can add links to the wiki to threads
 in the archives, and anything posted from then on is self-maintaining
 (except when new threads are started - but even if each patch gets 5
 threads that's not a huge chore).
 
 I see no reason to go manually copying all 2k emails to the wiki.

Well, I am waiting for someone to show me how it is done because I can't
figure out a way.  Do it and I will gladly stop doing what I am doing.

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  EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

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[HACKERS] Patch queue - wiki (was varadic patch)

2008-04-02 Thread Greg Smith

On Wed, 2 Apr 2008, Bruce Momjian wrote:

The new permanent ones are permanent against mailbox movement, and in 
fact the comments and thread merging also travels with the email.


The someone replied to your comment links in e-messages I've been 
getting the last few days have all been working, which is a first.  The 
configuration you're running right now I'd consider the first candidate to 
be a stable version, so thumbs up from me for reaching that point.


It's clear to me only now that you can think of the patch queue as being a 
list with this structure:


1) Patch name (defaults to the subject of the first message)
2) List of messages related to that patch
3) List of comments
4) Status
5) Assigned reviewers

Bruce's toolchain converts an mbox of messages to generate the first two, 
then has a web interface to allow adding the third.  Right now the message 
list is internally consistant but not useful in the long term (doesn't 
have links to the archives, just this temporary page).  Until the search 
for message ID feature is added to the archives I don't know that this 
situation can be improved.


Those hacking on tools to convert Bruce's currently preferred working form 
(that revolves around mbox files) into something else that's web oriented 
are stuck with considering how all the above information is going to be 
handled before everybody will be satisfied.  I can see how a script that 
converts the current pages into wiki markup, with placeholders where 
someone can manually update the comments to summarize those on the page, 
would be helpful.  That basically creates an easier to read Queue 
summary like Stephan was doing for 8.3--that included items 1,4,5 from 
the above.  But that's a one-way operation that doesn't really help with 
the commenting situation, and it's inevitably going to lag behind the 
mailbox-centered queue unless it's made fully automatic.  I can't think of 
anything better that doesn't require building some sort of database that 
holds all this information and drives page generation.


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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue - wiki (was varadic patch)

2008-04-02 Thread Tom Lane
Greg Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 Those hacking on tools to convert Bruce's currently preferred working form 
 (that revolves around mbox files) into something else that's web oriented 
 are stuck with considering how all the above information is going to be 
 handled before everybody will be satisfied.  I can see how a script that 
 converts the current pages into wiki markup, with placeholders where 
 someone can manually update the comments to summarize those on the page, 
 would be helpful.  That basically creates an easier to read Queue 
 summary like Stephan was doing for 8.3--that included items 1,4,5 from 
 the above.  But that's a one-way operation that doesn't really help with 
 the commenting situation, and it's inevitably going to lag behind the 
 mailbox-centered queue unless it's made fully automatic.  I can't think of 
 anything better that doesn't require building some sort of database that 
 holds all this information and drives page generation.

This seems to be ignoring the possibility of those involved with the
patch queue simply manually editing the wiki page.

For the past couple of weeks I've been dealing with both Bruce's queue
and the one at
http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/CommitFest:March
and frankly I find the latter a *whole* lot more satisfactory, despite
the fact that it's got exactly zero custom tooling or infrastructure
behind it.  It doesn't have artificial constraints on page organization;
I can update it as soon as I've done something rather than waiting
around for Bruce to do so; and there's an automatically maintained
history of changes.  Bruce has put a whole lot of man-hours into
getting his page to do a few of the things we could do for free with
the wiki page, but it's still got a long way to go.

Now it would certainly be nice if there were some tools that would
assist with dumping URLs for newly-arrived messages into the wiki page.
Perhaps some of the pgsql-www crowd can think about how to do that.
But even if we had to do that entirely by hand, I'd rather go with the
wiki page.

At some point it might be worth building the sort of heavy-duty
infrastructure for the patch queue that you have in mind here.
I don't think we need it yet, though, and I definitely don't think
we understand our requirements well enough yet to start designing
it.  One of the reasons I like the wiki approach is exactly that
there's such a low barrier to getting started with it.

regards, tom lane

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue - wiki (was varadic patch)

2008-04-02 Thread Andrew Dunstan



Tom Lane wrote:


For the past couple of weeks I've been dealing with both Bruce's queue
and the one at
http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/CommitFest:March
and frankly I find the latter a *whole* lot more satisfactory, despite
the fact that it's got exactly zero custom tooling or infrastructure
behind it.  It doesn't have artificial constraints on page organization;
I can update it as soon as I've done something rather than waiting
around for Bruce to do so; and there's an automatically maintained
history of changes.  Bruce has put a whole lot of man-hours into
getting his page to do a few of the things we could do for free with
the wiki page, but it's still got a long way to go.

Now it would certainly be nice if there were some tools that would
assist with dumping URLs for newly-arrived messages into the wiki page.
Perhaps some of the pgsql-www crowd can think about how to do that.
But even if we had to do that entirely by hand, I'd rather go with the
wiki page.

At some point it might be worth building the sort of heavy-duty
infrastructure for the patch queue that you have in mind here.
I don't think we need it yet, though, and I definitely don't think
we understand our requirements well enough yet to start designing
it.  One of the reasons I like the wiki approach is exactly that
there's such a low barrier to getting started with it.


  


+ MAXINT.

cheers

andrew

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue - wiki (was varadic patch)

2008-04-02 Thread Bruce Momjian
Tom Lane wrote:
 For the past couple of weeks I've been dealing with both Bruce's queue
 and the one at
 http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/CommitFest:March
 and frankly I find the latter a *whole* lot more satisfactory, despite
 the fact that it's got exactly zero custom tooling or infrastructure
 behind it.  It doesn't have artificial constraints on page organization;
 I can update it as soon as I've done something rather than waiting
 around for Bruce to do so; and there's an automatically maintained
 history of changes.  Bruce has put a whole lot of man-hours into
 getting his page to do a few of the things we could do for free with
 the wiki page, but it's still got a long way to go.
 
 Now it would certainly be nice if there were some tools that would
 assist with dumping URLs for newly-arrived messages into the wiki page.
 Perhaps some of the pgsql-www crowd can think about how to do that.
 But even if we had to do that entirely by hand, I'd rather go with the
 wiki page.
 
 At some point it might be worth building the sort of heavy-duty
 infrastructure for the patch queue that you have in mind here.
 I don't think we need it yet, though, and I definitely don't think
 we understand our requirements well enough yet to start designing
 it.  One of the reasons I like the wiki approach is exactly that
 there's such a low barrier to getting started with it.

It is not clear to me how a wiki can be easily created for 2k emails and
then maintained in a reasonable way, or how emails can be added to it
easily.

There are several steps:

o  getting those 2k emails to start the commit fest
o  getting them into a wiki in a way that is fast/efficient
o  updating the wiki for changes efficiently

Keep in mind the patch emails are pretty dynamic.  As you get closer to
the end of the commit fest, the wiki is easier because the list of open
items becomes more stable.

I am able to give others the ability to add, move, and delete emails in
my patch queue, if desired.

If people want to use the wiki, go ahead --- this would be one less job
for me to do.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian  [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

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[HACKERS] Patch queue permenent URLs

2008-03-27 Thread Bruce Momjian
I have found a way to have permanent URLs that stay permanent even if
the email is moved from the patches queue to the patches_hold queue.
The trick is to use base to specify the base directory in the html.

The new URLs look like:

http://momjian.us/mhonarc/message-id/[EMAIL PROTECTED]

The new URLs appear now.  The old permanent will also remain active
until the next commit fest.

-- 
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  EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue permenent URLs

2008-03-27 Thread Simon Riggs
On Thu, 2008-03-27 at 11:18 -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:

 The new URLs look like:
 
   http://momjian.us/mhonarc/message-id/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 
 The new URLs appear now.  The old permanent will also remain active
 until the next commit fest.

If they are going to be permanent then they should reference a
PostgreSQL project domain rather than a personal domain and a company
one. Without disrespect to either, our emails should not rely on
external domains. That way the project is in control, not the other way
around.

-- 
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  2ndQuadrant  http://www.2ndQuadrant.com 

  PostgreSQL UK 2008 Conference: http://www.postgresql.org.uk


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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue permenent URLs

2008-03-27 Thread Dave Page
On Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 3:44 PM, Simon Riggs [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 On Thu, 2008-03-27 at 11:18 -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:

   The new URLs look like:
  
 http://momjian.us/mhonarc/message-id/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
  
   The new URLs appear now.  The old permanent will also remain active
   until the next commit fest.

  If they are going to be permanent then they should reference a
  PostgreSQL project domain rather than a personal domain and a company
  one. Without disrespect to either, our emails should not rely on
  external domains. That way the project is in control, not the other way
  around.

The company domain is from the message id by the looks of it - it
should not be changed under any circumstances.


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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue permenent URLs

2008-03-27 Thread Alvaro Herrera
Simon Riggs wrote:
 On Thu, 2008-03-27 at 11:18 -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
 
  The new URLs look like:
  
  http://momjian.us/mhonarc/message-id/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
  
  The new URLs appear now.  The old permanent will also remain active
  until the next commit fest.
 
 If they are going to be permanent then they should reference a
 PostgreSQL project domain rather than a personal domain and a company
 one. Without disrespect to either, our emails should not rely on
 external domains. That way the project is in control, not the other way
 around.

Well, the patch queue maintained by Bruce has always been in his domain.
And regarding the company domain, I note that that string is part of a
Message-Id, generated by the patch submitter's machine, so entirely out
of Bruce's (or anyone else's) control.

Note that we will have permanent URLs by Message-Id in our archives soon
too: if I have my way, they will look like 

http://archives.postgresql.org/msgid/[EMAIL PROTECTED]

or something similar.

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue permenent URLs

2008-03-27 Thread Bruce Momjian
Dave Page wrote:
 On Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 3:44 PM, Simon Riggs [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  On Thu, 2008-03-27 at 11:18 -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
 
The new URLs look like:
   
  http://momjian.us/mhonarc/message-id/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
   
The new URLs appear now.  The old permanent will also remain active
until the next commit fest.
 
   If they are going to be permanent then they should reference a
   PostgreSQL project domain rather than a personal domain and a company
   one. Without disrespect to either, our emails should not rely on
   external domains. That way the project is in control, not the other way
   around.
 
 The company domain is from the message id by the looks of it - it
 should not be changed under any circumstances.

Yep, the only way we can get rid of the company is to use an MD5 hash
(which is what I used at first) instead of the message id, but people
didn't like that.

I have updated the permanent URL to be in the postgresql.org domain:

http://momjian.postgresql.org/mhonarc/message-id/[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Of course, momjian.us works too.  (I am redirecting
momjian.postgresql.org to momjian.us because the comments are bound to
the domain name momjian.us.)

-- 
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  EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

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Re: [HACKERS] patch queue needs update was:(PostgreSQL 8.4 development plan)

2008-02-06 Thread Jaime Casanova
On Feb 6, 2008 1:52 PM, Alvaro Herrera [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Josh Berkus escribió:

  I think we might want to do something along the lines of what Stefan set up
  (at least I think it was he) for the end of 8.4 on developer.postgresql.org.
  Bruce's patch list is easy to update, but hard to read.  I'll put some 
  effort
  into it.

 Easy to update for Bruce -- for anyone else it is impossible to update
 AFAIK.


and, of course, will be things that escape from Bruce's eyes... for
example, the Add GUC temp_tablespaces toprovide a default location
for patch was actually committed  in 8.3 and it's still on the patch
queue
http://momjian.us/mhonarc/patches_hold/msg0.html

i think a depuration will be needed to keep the first commit fests simple...

-- 
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build bigger and better idiot-proof programs and the universe trying
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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue triage

2007-09-13 Thread Simon Riggs
On Wed, 2007-09-12 at 17:47 -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
 For those who have forgotten the progress we have made toward 8.3, here
 are the open patches we had for 8.3 as of May 1, 2006:

Could you please issue a list of open items for 8.3?

I want to check whether you are waiting on me for anything and which
things have been deferred to next release.

Thanks,

-- 
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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue triage

2007-09-13 Thread Bruce Momjian
Pavan Deolasee wrote:
 On 9/13/07, Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
 
  For those who have forgotten the progress we have made toward 8.3, here
  are the open patches we had for 8.3 as of May 1, 2006:
 
 
 You mean May 1, 2007 ;-)

Yea, sorry.

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue triage

2007-09-13 Thread Bruce Momjian
Simon Riggs wrote:
 On Wed, 2007-09-12 at 17:47 -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
  For those who have forgotten the progress we have made toward 8.3, here
  are the open patches we had for 8.3 as of May 1, 2006:
 
 Could you please issue a list of open items for 8.3?
 
 I want to check whether you are waiting on me for anything and which
 things have been deferred to next release.

I am working on putting them all in the patch queue now.

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue triage

2007-09-12 Thread Bruce Momjian

For those who have forgotten the progress we have made toward 8.3, here
are the open patches we had for 8.3 as of May 1, 2006:

---

Tom Lane wrote:
 Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
  FYI, Tom, Heikki, I need one of you to post the list of patches and
  where we think we are on each one, even if the list is imperfect.
 
 This message is an attempt to sort out which patch queue entries have
 no hope of getting into 8.3 (and so we shouldn't spend more time on them
 right now), which ones can get in but are waiting on their authors for
 more work, and which ones are ready for immediate review.
 
 You'll notice that numerically quite a lot of the patches fall into the
 dead category.  This isn't actually all that surprising because if
 they were apply-able they'd have gotten in.  (It's not like we've
 completely neglected applying patches for the last six months...)
 However, many of the remaining live patches are huge ones, like HOT and
 delayed commit, and are going to consume considerable review effort
 (again, if they didn't, they might have been in already).
 
 The bottom line is that we are desperately in need of more review
 manpower.  I'm pleased to report that Heikki Linnakangas has promised to
 devote most of the next few weeks to helping review, and has already
 picked out some patches he feels qualified to work on, as you'll see
 below.  I have also been coordinating reviewing assignments off-list with
 Neil and Magnus to avoid duplication of effort.  But I'd like to encourage
 everyone who's done any backend hacking to look at the live patches not
 shown as assigned to someone specific.  The more eyeballs the better;
 anything you catch is something someone else might miss.  Also, several
 of the open patches are in need of more performance testing, so if you
 can help out in that fashion please do so.
 
 With that, the patches:
 
 
 * Re: [pgsql-patches] [PATCHES] [HACKERS] [Fwd: Index Advisor]
/Gurjeet Singh/
 
 I don't think this can be applied in anything like its current state.
 The internal interface to the planner is not very good, and ditto for the
 user API.  What I would suggest trying to do is get a set of plugin hooks
 defined for the planner that would allow the advisor to be implemented
 entirely as an external module, and then let it be worked on as a
 pgfoundry project.  I have some ideas about appropriate design of the
 plugin hooks (as mentioned in my review message of a month ago), but I
 have to say that getting that done for 8.3 is lower-priority than some of
 the other patches.
 
 * [pgsql-patches] Ctid chain following enhancement
/Pavan Deolasee/
 
 I'm not very excited about this --- it seems to me to complicate the code
 in some places that are not in fact performance-critical.  While it
 doesn't seem likely to break things, I'm not in favor of reducing code
 readability unless a measurable performance improvement can be shown.
 Can we have some tests showing this is worthwhile?
 
 * [PATCHES] Error correction for n_dead_tuples 
   /ITAGAKI Takahiro/
 
 Waiting for OldestXmin patch to be accepted or rejected.  However,
 regardless of the fate of that patch, I'm concerned that this one creates
 an open-loop behavior in which the n_dead_tuples estimate will diverge
 arbitrarily far from reality over time.  I criticized the original
 proposal on that basis, and I'm not convinced this version fixes it,
 because of the fact that stats counter updates occur much later than the
 actions they count.  (My recent patch to rate-limit tabstat messages made
 that problem worse, but it existed anyway.)  What might make sense is for
 vacuum to count the number of dead-but-not-removable tuples it skips over,
 and apply that as the value of n_dead_tuples on receipt of the vacuum
 message (instead of setting to zero as now).  This is likely to be wrong
 with respect to the actions of transactions running concurrently with the
 vacuum, but I think so is the proposed patch; and at least in this form
 the error certainly cannot accumulate across vacuum cycles.
 
 * [PATCHES] Table function support  /Pavel Stehule/
 
 Neil has promised to review this.  AFAIK there are no showstoppers but
 there are some disagreements on the details of the functionality.
 
 * [HACKERS] Grouped Index Tuples  /Heikki Linnakangas/
 * [HACKERS] Grouped Index Tuples / Clustered Indexes
/Heikki Linnakangas/
 
 Needs review.  I'm not sure how many people besides Heikki have really
 looked at this (I know I haven't).
 
 * Re: [PATCHES] POSIX shared memory support 
   /Chris Marcellino/
 
 I'm not convinced that we want this at all.  The original proposal was
 to provide an alternative for platforms without SysV shmem support,
 but the working versions of the patch fail to remove the SysV dependency,
 and the portability of this code is itself quite unproven.  Do we really
 want to take on maintenance of 

Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue triage

2007-09-12 Thread Pavan Deolasee
On 9/13/07, Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:


 For those who have forgotten the progress we have made toward 8.3, here
 are the open patches we had for 8.3 as of May 1, 2006:


You mean May 1, 2007 ;-)


Thanks,
Pavan


-- 
Pavan Deolasee
EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com


Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue triage

2007-05-17 Thread Joshua D. Drake

Tom Lane wrote:


At this point it seems nothing will be done about this issue for 8.3.

* [PATCHES] plpgpsm  /Pavel Stehule/

I think this has to be held for 8.4: it was submitted too late for the 8.3
feature deadline, and in fact I don't recall that there was any community
discussion/consensus on accepting it into core at all.  Another big
problem is that it largely copies-and-pastes the plpgsql code, which I
think is an unacceptable maintenance burden in the long run.  We need to
consider whether we can't refactor to avoid code duplication.


Per my updated patch email to the lists yesterday, plus Toms' above 
comments *and* Alvaro's comments to me when I asked Alexey to review 
it... may I strongly suggest that we bounce this for further development 
in 8.4.


Joshua D. Drake











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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue triage

2007-05-17 Thread Joshua D. Drake

Pavan Deolasee wrote:



I suppose inserting HOT tuples without index maintenance is useful
even if no
changes to the space allocation is made is useful. It won't get the
space
usage but it would save on index thrashing. But that still implies
all the
code to handle scans, updates, index builds, etc. Those chunks could be
separated out but you can't commit without them.



There are few things that we can separate easily, like CREATE INDEX
related changes, VACUUM and VACUUM FULL related changed, space
reuse related changes etc. Let me give it a shot.


Did we ever get a broken up patch for this?

Joshua D. Drake




Thanks,
Pavan


--

EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com



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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue triage

2007-05-17 Thread Bruce Momjian
Joshua D. Drake wrote:
 Tom Lane wrote:
 
  At this point it seems nothing will be done about this issue for 8.3.
  
  * [PATCHES] plpgpsm  /Pavel Stehule/
  
  I think this has to be held for 8.4: it was submitted too late for the 8.3
  feature deadline, and in fact I don't recall that there was any community
  discussion/consensus on accepting it into core at all.  Another big
  problem is that it largely copies-and-pastes the plpgsql code, which I
  think is an unacceptable maintenance burden in the long run.  We need to
  consider whether we can't refactor to avoid code duplication.
 
 Per my updated patch email to the lists yesterday, plus Toms' above 
 comments *and* Alvaro's comments to me when I asked Alexey to review 
 it... may I strongly suggest that we bounce this for further development 
 in 8.4.

Agreed.  Done.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB   http://www.enterprisedb.com

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue triage

2007-05-17 Thread Pavan Deolasee

On 5/17/07, Joshua D. Drake [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:


Pavan Deolasee wrote:



 There are few things that we can separate easily, like CREATE INDEX
 related changes, VACUUM and VACUUM FULL related changed, space
 reuse related changes etc. Let me give it a shot.

Did we ever get a broken up patch for this?




I broke the patch into 5 smaller, logical pieces and posted them
on May 7th.


Thanks,
Pavan


--
Pavan Deolasee
EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com


Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue triage

2007-05-17 Thread Heikki Linnakangas

Joshua D. Drake wrote:

Pavan Deolasee wrote:


I suppose inserting HOT tuples without index maintenance is useful
even if no
changes to the space allocation is made is useful. It won't get the
space
usage but it would save on index thrashing. But that still implies
all the
code to handle scans, updates, index builds, etc. Those chunks 
could be

separated out but you can't commit without them.

There are few things that we can separate easily, like CREATE INDEX
related changes, VACUUM and VACUUM FULL related changed, space
reuse related changes etc. Let me give it a shot.


Did we ever get a broken up patch for this?


Yes:

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-patches/2007-05/msg00065.php

--
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  EnterpriseDB   http://www.enterprisedb.com

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue triage

2007-05-17 Thread Joshua D. Drake

Heikki Linnakangas wrote:


There are few things that we can separate easily, like CREATE INDEX
related changes, VACUUM and VACUUM FULL related changed, space
reuse related changes etc. Let me give it a shot.


Did we ever get a broken up patch for this?


Yes:

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-patches/2007-05/msg00065.php


Thanks :).

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake





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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue triage

2007-05-07 Thread Koichi Suzuki
Sorry for late responce due to very long vacation season in Japan.

Tom Lane wrote:

  * Re: [PATCHES] [HACKERS] Full page writes improvement, code update
 /Koichi Suzuki/
 
  I feel that we have to insist that this be modified to not create
any WAL
  bloat in the pre-compression form.  That will be more efficient and will
  avoid the whole argument about whether a switch is needed.  There
was also
  doubt about whether the external programs (pg_compresslog etc) were
ready
  for prime time.  At this point we could accept a patch that makes
whatever
  small tweaks are needed to ensure that an incremental-format WAL record
  can be extracted from a full-page-write record, at least for the most
  common WAL record types for which compression is actually important.  I
  think the actual compression/decompression programs could undergo
further
  development on pgfoundry with an eye to merging them into core
before 8.4
  release.

As suggested by Tom, I agree that WAL should not include both full
page write and incremental (logical) log.   I began to examine WAL
record format to see if incremental log can be made from full page
writes.   It will be okay even before 8.4, if simplified patch to the
core is accepted.   I will post simplified patch to the core as follows:

1. Mark the flag to indicate that the WAL record is compressable from
full page writes to incremental log.  This flag will be set if
a) It is not written during the hot backup, and
b) Archive command is active, and
c) WAL contains full page writes, and
d) full_page_writes=on.
No logical log will be written to WAL in this case, and
2. During recovery, xl_tot_len check will be skipped for compressed WAL
records.

With this patch, compress/decompress can be developped outside the core.
 I'd like to post them to PG foundary first for the review for 8.4.

I'd be very grateful if this patch can be considered again.

Best Regards;


Koichi Suzuki

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue triage

2007-05-03 Thread Pavan Deolasee

On 5/2/07, Gregory Stark [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:



Can we? I mean, sure you can break the patch up into chunks which might
make
it easier to read, but are any of the chunks useful alone?



Well I agree, it would be a tough job. I can try and break the patch into
several self-complete incremental patches which compile and work, but
I am worried about missing something somewhere and/or inserting
any bugs in the process.



I suppose inserting HOT tuples without index maintenance is useful even if
no
changes to the space allocation is made is useful. It won't get the space
usage but it would save on index thrashing. But that still implies all the
code to handle scans, updates, index builds, etc. Those chunks could be
separated out but you can't commit without them.




There are few things that we can separate easily, like CREATE INDEX
related changes, VACUUM and VACUUM FULL related changed, space
reuse related changes etc. Let me give it a shot.

Thanks,
Pavan


--

EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com


Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue triage

2007-05-02 Thread Pavan Deolasee

On 5/2/07, Tom Lane [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:




* [PATCHES] HOT Patch - Ready for review  /Pavan Deolasee/

This needs a *lot* of review.  Can we break it down into more manageable
chunks?  I'm not sure that anyone's got a full grasp of the implications
of this patch, and that's a scary thought.




Sure, we can do that. I actually did that when I posted the
incremental versions of the HOT-patch, each version implementing
the next big chunk of the code. I can reverse engineer that again.

When I do that, should I just break the patch into logical pieces without
worrying about whether each piece alone builds/works correcttly ?
Or should I try to make each piece complete ? I know the second
would be a preferred way, but it would be more work. But if that can
considerably ease review process, I would do that by all means.
In any case, there will be dependecies amongst the patches.

I am on leave today, so would start on this tomorrow.

Thanks,
Pavan


--

EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com


Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue triage

2007-05-02 Thread Oleg Bartunov

On Tue, 1 May 2007, Tom Lane wrote:

* [HACKERS] tsearch_core patch for inclusion
 /Teodor Sigaev/

Have we resolved whether the API and the dump/restore strategy are
acceptable?  The code needs review too, but not till we've settled
on the basic question whether we like the feature set.



There were several discussion and we tried to satisfy a claims.
We added the ability of creation of FTS with one command
(just create GIN index on text attribute), which many 
people like a lot, we changed SQL syntax to be more SQL-ish and we like it.
We discussed the new FTS on two conferences in Moscow and got positive 
opinions. Also, we wrote FTSBOOK

( http://mira.sai.msu.su/~megera/pgsql/ftsdoc/ )
 in english and FTS introduction in russian
( http://www.sai.msu.su/~megera/postgres/talks/fts_pgsql_intro.html ).

For the period from the patch was announced there were  3100 unique IP, which
downloaded FTSBOOK.

Regards,
Oleg
_
Oleg Bartunov, Research Scientist, Head of AstroNet (www.astronet.ru),
Sternberg Astronomical Institute, Moscow University, Russia
Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://www.sai.msu.su/~megera/
phone: +007(495)939-16-83, +007(495)939-23-83

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[HACKERS] Patch queue triage

2007-05-02 Thread Pavel Stehule

Hello Tom,

All what you wrote is true. plpgpsm copies-and-pastes about 30% of code and 
It is terrible for long run. But when I can change it? Writing differnt 
runtime is nonsense, better way is refactoring plpgsql and then sharing code 
with its. It's not propable in 8.4 ..  there will by lot of important 
patches from 8.3, and it's mean so interpret wll not be in core before two 
years. All your last patches I merged in one day.


In next months plpgpsm can follow plpgsql, or else. plpgpsm can be 
experimental and can be used for integration into core and creating SQL 
procedural language API in 8.5 (and plpgsql will be in 8.4, 8.5 without 
changes) and in 8.6 plpgsql will be modified to use this API. This road 
expect stable plpgsql for next two, three years. plpgpsm can solve some 
questions about future plpgsql. It contains some others construct which is 
foreign in plpgsql and plpgsql can be in Oracle's style forever (with 
David's patch Oracle collections are possible).


Bigger problem for plpgpsm isn't runtime but users. It needs bigger discuss 
about integration into core, and it isn't possible without integration into 
core. Current API can be dismissed in others API. With variable API we can 
drop variables substitution in SQL, FAST SQL call can be part of SPI. But 
all needs time. From plpgsql view simple change of caching was big patch. I 
will be happy if 8.4 will contains true session variables. It can be used in 
SQL languages later. I afraid so all these steps needs long time.


plpgpsm is ready. It's patch without dependencies and has not influence to 
other parts of postgresql. I am working on documentation now. Czech version 
is completed, waiting for translation to english.


Regards
Pavel Stehule



* [PATCHES] plpgpsm  /Pavel Stehule/

I think this has to be held for 8.4: it was submitted too late for the 8.3
feature deadline, and in fact I don't recall that there was any community
discussion/consensus on accepting it into core at all.  Another big
problem is that it largely copies-and-pastes the plpgsql code, which I
think is an unacceptable maintenance burden in the long run.  We need to
consider whether we can't refactor to avoid code duplication.


_
Najdete si svou lasku a nove pratele na Match.com. http://www.msn.cz/


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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue triage

2007-05-02 Thread FAST PostgreSQL

* [PATCHES] Updateable cursors patch  /FAST PostgreSQL/

This is incomplete, and I fear at this point has to be held over to 8.4.



It is true that my original patch post said that I need to modify the 
patch to work with tidscan. Since then I have realized that this 
modification is not needed as it would have the same result as the 
'branching out from sequential scan' solution currently implemented.


I was hoping that I could discuss this with whoever picks up the patch 
for review before doing modifications if any is needed. So in my humble 
opinion, it would be great if this can be considered for 8.3 as there 
are not many modifications needed.


P.S. Only Simon commented on my original patch. Simon, do you have time 
to revisit the patch so that we could discuss this?


Rgds,
Arul Shaji



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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue triage

2007-05-02 Thread Gregory Stark
Pavan Deolasee [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 On 5/2/07, Tom Lane [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 This needs a *lot* of review.  Can we break it down into more manageable
 chunks?  

 Sure, we can do that. I actually did that when I posted the
 incremental versions of the HOT-patch, each version implementing
 the next big chunk of the code. I can reverse engineer that again.

Can we? I mean, sure you can break the patch up into chunks which might make
it easier to read, but are any of the chunks useful alone?

I suppose inserting HOT tuples without index maintenance is useful even if no
changes to the space allocation is made is useful. It won't get the space
usage but it would save on index thrashing. But that still implies all the
code to handle scans, updates, index builds, etc. Those chunks could be
separated out but you can't commit without them.

-- 
  Gregory Stark
  EnterpriseDB  http://www.enterprisedb.com


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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue triage

2007-05-02 Thread Gregory Stark
Tom Lane [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 FYI, Tom, Heikki, I need one of you to post the list of patches and
 where we think we are on each one, even if the list is imperfect.

 This message is an attempt to sort out which patch queue entries have
 no hope of getting into 8.3 (and so we shouldn't spend more time on them
 right now), which ones can get in but are waiting on their authors for
 more work, and which ones are ready for immediate review.

Thanks for this. This is exactly what we've been missing recently I think.

 * [PATCHES] non-recursive WITH clause support 
   /Gregory Stark/

 I think the consensus is that we should wait for a more complete WITH
 implementation to be submitted, since this one creates compatibility
 issues without any real return in the form of added functionality.

I submitted it because it filled in a missing ANSI feature but nobody's piped
up saying they missed that feature so, sure.

 * [PATCHES] Concurrent psql v4 [WIP]  /stark/

 This is waiting on the author to change the API per list discussions; we
 can't apply something that is about to have some commands removed ...

I did finish the api changes -- though I'm not too happy with the names. I was
expecting the list to play the name game so I just put in placeholder names
originally. I'm adding documentation and example regression tests now. 

Also I'm trying to fix the cursor-mode FETCH_COUNT support which it breaks.
I'm thinking of once the first batch of rows arrives just going into a
synchronous function to fetch the rest of the resultsets.

 * Re: [HACKERS] Modifying TOAST thresholds  /Tom Lane/

 At this point it seems nothing will be done about this issue for 8.3.

I'm not sure anyone has an idea how to test it. TPCC isn't really useful
because it has a fixed size (500 byte) string buffer. Perhaps if we modified
it to have a random string length uniformly distributed between 0-2k ? But
even then it never does any scans based on that buffer. But the problem with
going with something more natural is that it'll be harder to tell exactly what
it's testing.

 * [HACKERS] tsearch_core patch for inclusion 
   /Teodor Sigaev/

 Have we resolved whether the API and the dump/restore strategy are
 acceptable?  The code needs review too, but not till we've settled
 on the basic question whether we like the feature set.

Personally I actually do like the idea of promoting tsearch to first-class
citizen by giving it keywords and a place in the grammar. I think it's a more
fully integrated interface than the function based one. The only reason I
might think otherwise was if it was just a crutch for missing features it had
exposed that would be better implemented more generically. But I don't think
that's the case.

 * Re: [PATCHES] [Fwd: Deferred Transactions, Transaction Guarantee
   and COMMITwithout waiting]  /Simon Riggs/

 Simon is on the hook to submit an updated patch.  I hope this one
 makes it in, as it looks like a really nice performance improvement
 for those who can use it; but the original patch seems overcomplicated.

I know Simon's really busy. I might be able to help with it if he wants.

 * Re: [PATCHES] LIMIT/SORT optimization  /Gregory Stark/
 * [PATCHES] updated SORT/LIMIT patch  /Gregory Stark/

 I will look at this.  I recall being concerned about whether there
 wasn't a cleaner way to introduce the required inter-node communication.

The next big thing to keep in mind in this area is a unique sort which would
need to know if there's a Unique node above it with the same key. If the
resulting inter-node communication arrangement has your blessing and can
handle that as well then I'll probably do that for 8.4.

Incidentally I would prefer it if you want to make changes that you explain
the changes to me and let me make them. It gives me a better chance to
understand what the changes really are and the motivation than trying to read
a patch later and understand why you made the changes you did. I understand
sometimes it's easier to just write the code than to explain the idea to
someone else and then review the resulting code though and there's already
enough work your plate so if that's the case then so be it.


-- 
  Gregory Stark
  EnterpriseDB  http://www.enterprisedb.com


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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue triage

2007-05-02 Thread Magnus Hagander
On Tue, May 01, 2007 at 10:44:38PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:

 * [PATCHES] Preliminary GSSAPI Patches  /Henry B. Hotz/
 
 Magnus is reviewing this one.

Check.

 * [PATCHES] Clear up strxfrm() in UTF-8 with locale on Windows
/ITAGAKI Takahiro/
 
 Someone else needs to look at this; I can't test it.  Magnus?

Yup, it's on my list.


//Magnus


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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue triage

2007-05-02 Thread Bruce Momjian
Gregory Stark wrote:
 Tom Lane [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 
  Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
  FYI, Tom, Heikki, I need one of you to post the list of patches and
  where we think we are on each one, even if the list is imperfect.
 
  This message is an attempt to sort out which patch queue entries have
  no hope of getting into 8.3 (and so we shouldn't spend more time on them
  right now), which ones can get in but are waiting on their authors for
  more work, and which ones are ready for immediate review.
 
 Thanks for this. This is exactly what we've been missing recently I think.

100% agree.

  * Re: [HACKERS] Modifying TOAST thresholds  /Tom Lane/
 
  At this point it seems nothing will be done about this issue for 8.3.
 
 I'm not sure anyone has an idea how to test it. TPCC isn't really useful
 because it has a fixed size (500 byte) string buffer. Perhaps if we modified
 it to have a random string length uniformly distributed between 0-2k ? But
 even then it never does any scans based on that buffer. But the problem with
 going with something more natural is that it'll be harder to tell exactly what
 it's testing.

My idea on this was to create two backends, one with the default TOAST
value, and a second with a value of 50 bytes.  Create a table with one
TEXT field, and several other columns, each column  50 bytes.

Then, fill the table with random data (script attached that might help),
and the try 2000, 1500, 1000, etc, bytes in the TEXT column for each row
(use random data so the compression code doesn't shrink it).  Then run a
test with both backends acessing the TEXT column and non-TEXT column and
measure the difference between the two backends, i.e. the backend with a
TOAST value of 50 should show faster access on the non-TEXT field, but
slower access on the TEXT field.

Then, figure out where the gains on the non-TEXT field seem to diminish
in usefulness.  Basically, with a lower TOAST value, we are going to
spend more time accessing the TEXT field, but the speedup for the
non-TEXT field should be large enough win that we don't care. As the
TEXT column becomes shorter, it has less affect on the non-TEXT access.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB   http://www.enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +
:

ROWS=10
COLSIZE=2500

echo 
DROP TABLE test;
CREATE TABLE test(i SERIAL, t text);
INSERT INTO test (t)
SELECT  array_to_string(ARRAY(
SELECT chr(32 + (95 * random())::integer)
FROM generate_series(1,$COLSIZE)),'')
FROMgenerate_series(1, $ROWS);
SELECT  pg_relation_size('test') AS HEAP,
pg_total_relation_size('test') - pg_relation_size('test') AS 
TOAST;
SET log_min_duration_statement = 0;
SET client_min_messages = 'log';
SELECT t FROM test WHERE i = 234329823; | 
sql test

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue triage

2007-05-02 Thread Gregory Stark

Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 Then, figure out where the gains on the non-TEXT field seem to diminish
 in usefulness.  Basically, with a lower TOAST value, we are going to
 spend more time accessing the TEXT field, but the speedup for the
 non-TEXT field should be large enough win that we don't care. As the
 TEXT column becomes shorter, it has less affect on the non-TEXT access.

I guess the key is to break down what it is we want to measure into several
parts. These can each be measured precisely for various sized TOASTed data.

Costs:

1) cost of retrieving data from TOAST pointer versus retrieving data from
   inline tuple. We just want the absolute time difference between the two
   operations, not the percentage difference.

2) cost of creating TOAST pointer (ie, inserting a new tuple with a TOAST
   pointer or updating a previously inlined tuple to have a TOASTed column). 

3) cost of deleting a TOAST pointer (ie, deleting a tuple or updating a tuple
   to no longer have a TOASTed column)

3) cost of deleting a tuple with an existing TOAST pointer (or updating a
   tuple to be all inlined) versus deleting an plain tuple or updating a plain
   tuple.

Savings:

1) time savings accessing a tuple without retrieving the TOAST pointer versus
   having to access the tuple with the data inlined.

2) time savings updating a tuple without modifying toasted data versus
   updating same tuple with the data inlined in both versions.

The plan you described would be testing costs 1 and savings 1 but I think we
need to continue to the others as well.

Then the trick is to somehow make some argument about the frequency of the
various operations and the acceptable tradeoff. I think you're right that the
time spent accessing the data would be the most important metric.

-- 
  Gregory Stark
  EnterpriseDB  http://www.enterprisedb.com


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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue triage

2007-05-02 Thread Bruce Momjian

Another complexity is testing cases where the table fits in shared
memory/RAM, and those that don't, and testing cases where heap fits in
RAM only because we pushed things to TOAST, and cases where we have to
do lots of TOAST access that doesn't fit in RAM.  I wonder if it is even
worth testing it because pushing more to TOAST probably means the more
frequently accessed data is in RAM.

Anyway, how is going to run these tests?

---

Gregory Stark wrote:
 
 Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 
  Then, figure out where the gains on the non-TEXT field seem to diminish
  in usefulness.  Basically, with a lower TOAST value, we are going to
  spend more time accessing the TEXT field, but the speedup for the
  non-TEXT field should be large enough win that we don't care. As the
  TEXT column becomes shorter, it has less affect on the non-TEXT access.
 
 I guess the key is to break down what it is we want to measure into several
 parts. These can each be measured precisely for various sized TOASTed data.
 
 Costs:
 
 1) cost of retrieving data from TOAST pointer versus retrieving data from
inline tuple. We just want the absolute time difference between the two
operations, not the percentage difference.
 
 2) cost of creating TOAST pointer (ie, inserting a new tuple with a TOAST
pointer or updating a previously inlined tuple to have a TOASTed column). 
 
 3) cost of deleting a TOAST pointer (ie, deleting a tuple or updating a tuple
to no longer have a TOASTed column)
 
 3) cost of deleting a tuple with an existing TOAST pointer (or updating a
tuple to be all inlined) versus deleting an plain tuple or updating a plain
tuple.
 
 Savings:
 
 1) time savings accessing a tuple without retrieving the TOAST pointer versus
having to access the tuple with the data inlined.
 
 2) time savings updating a tuple without modifying toasted data versus
updating same tuple with the data inlined in both versions.
 
 The plan you described would be testing costs 1 and savings 1 but I think we
 need to continue to the others as well.
 
 Then the trick is to somehow make some argument about the frequency of the
 various operations and the acceptable tradeoff. I think you're right that the
 time spent accessing the data would be the most important metric.
 
 -- 
   Gregory Stark
   EnterpriseDB  http://www.enterprisedb.com
 
 
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  Bruce Momjian  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB   http://www.enterprisedb.com

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue triage

2007-05-02 Thread Andrew Dunstan



Tom Lane wrote:

Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
  

FYI, Tom, Heikki, I need one of you to post the list of patches and
where we think we are on each one, even if the list is imperfect.



This message is an attempt to sort out which patch queue entries have
no hope of getting into 8.3 (and so we shouldn't spend more time on them
right now), which ones can get in but are waiting on their authors for
more work, and which ones are ready for immediate review.
  


Excellent list.

I have a little time available now, so I'll work on some, starting with 
trying to complete arrays of complex types.


cheers

andrew


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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue triage

2007-05-02 Thread Heikki Linnakangas

Tom Lane wrote:

* [pgsql-patches] Ctid chain following enhancement
   /Pavan Deolasee/

I'm not very excited about this --- it seems to me to complicate the code
in some places that are not in fact performance-critical.  While it
doesn't seem likely to break things, I'm not in favor of reducing code
readability unless a measurable performance improvement can be shown.
Can we have some tests showing this is worthwhile?


IIRC this patch was originally part of an old HOT patch, and it was 
submitted as a separate patch because it has some benefit on its own but 
more importantly getting it applied first would make the HOT patch 
slightly smaller. I'm not sure if the latest HOT patch requires or 
includes this change anymore. If not we should drop this. If it does, 
then let's deal with this before attacking the hard core of HOT.



* [HACKERS] Grouped Index Tuples  /Heikki Linnakangas/
* [HACKERS] Grouped Index Tuples / Clustered Indexes
   /Heikki Linnakangas/

Needs review.  I'm not sure how many people besides Heikki have really
looked at this (I know I haven't).


The patch is ugly as it is. We need API changes to make it less ugly, I 
had hoped to discuss and reach consensus on them well before feature 
freeze, that's what the indexam API proposal and Stream bitmaps 
threads in the patch queue are all about. But those discussions and 
patches stalled, so the clustered index patch is still in the same ugly 
state.


I'm afraid we're getting past due on clustered indexes. The patch 
isn't ready for committing as it is, and we still don't have agreement 
on the API changes or even on the design in general. :(



* [HACKERS] Stream bitmaps  /Heikki Linnakangas/

I think this is on hold unless a finished bitmap-index patch shows up;
however there was some discussion of using this in support of clustered
indexes, so maybe it's live anyway?  Heikki?


This particular thread is closely related to bitmap indexes. But see 
next item:


* Re: [HACKERS] [PATCHES] Bitmapscan changes 
  /Heikki Linnakangas/


I had objected to this on the grounds that it seemed to be covering
only a narrow territory between HOT and bitmap indexes, but given the
probability that one or even both of those won't make it, we need to
give this one a second look.  So: live, needs review.


Are you talking about the patch I submitted at the beginning of that 
thread? Because the mail in the patch queue is actually about whether or 
not we want clustered indexes.


I think the original bitmapscan changes patch I submitted is live and 
needs review, even if clustered indexes and bitmap indexes are rejected. 
It should give some performance benefit when you do bitmap ANDs with 
partially lossy bitmaps, and from setting bits directly in the bitmap in 
the indexam in one call, instead of calling amgetmulti many times. 
Though I never measured that.



* [HACKERS] Indexam interface proposal  /Heikki Linnakangas/

AFAICS this discussion died out with no actual patch submitted.


This is part of clustered indexes.. This was my proposal of what the 
indexam API changes would be like. This patch is either live or dead 
together with clustered indexes.


--
  Heikki Linnakangas
  EnterpriseDB   http://www.enterprisedb.com

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue triage

2007-05-02 Thread Teodor Sigaev

http://www.sigaev.ru/misc/tsearch_core-0.46.gz
Patch is synced with current CVS HEAD and synced with bugfixes in 
contrib/tsearch2



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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue triage

2007-05-02 Thread Simon Riggs
On Tue, 2007-05-01 at 22:44 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:

Nice summary Tom.

 * Re: [PATCHES] [Fwd: Deferred Transactions, Transaction Guarantee
   and COMMITwithout waiting]  /Simon Riggs/
 
 Simon is on the hook to submit an updated patch.  I hope this one
 makes it in, as it looks like a really nice performance improvement
 for those who can use it; but the original patch seems overcomplicated.

It will, but it will be next week now. Changes agreed though.

 * [PATCHES] Minor recovery changes  /Simon Riggs/
 
 The submission mentions open issues --- when will those be resolved?
 Should we apply the patch-so-far anyway?

Patch is OK to go in as-is. There are open issues, but they need more
thought and discussion and I regret won't happen in a reasonable
timescale due to other work.

-- 
  Simon Riggs 
  EnterpriseDB   http://www.enterprisedb.com



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[HACKERS] Patch queue triage

2007-05-01 Thread Tom Lane
Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 FYI, Tom, Heikki, I need one of you to post the list of patches and
 where we think we are on each one, even if the list is imperfect.

This message is an attempt to sort out which patch queue entries have
no hope of getting into 8.3 (and so we shouldn't spend more time on them
right now), which ones can get in but are waiting on their authors for
more work, and which ones are ready for immediate review.

You'll notice that numerically quite a lot of the patches fall into the
dead category.  This isn't actually all that surprising because if
they were apply-able they'd have gotten in.  (It's not like we've
completely neglected applying patches for the last six months...)
However, many of the remaining live patches are huge ones, like HOT and
delayed commit, and are going to consume considerable review effort
(again, if they didn't, they might have been in already).

The bottom line is that we are desperately in need of more review
manpower.  I'm pleased to report that Heikki Linnakangas has promised to
devote most of the next few weeks to helping review, and has already
picked out some patches he feels qualified to work on, as you'll see
below.  I have also been coordinating reviewing assignments off-list with
Neil and Magnus to avoid duplication of effort.  But I'd like to encourage
everyone who's done any backend hacking to look at the live patches not
shown as assigned to someone specific.  The more eyeballs the better;
anything you catch is something someone else might miss.  Also, several
of the open patches are in need of more performance testing, so if you
can help out in that fashion please do so.

With that, the patches:


* Re: [pgsql-patches] [PATCHES] [HACKERS] [Fwd: Index Advisor]
   /Gurjeet Singh/

I don't think this can be applied in anything like its current state.
The internal interface to the planner is not very good, and ditto for the
user API.  What I would suggest trying to do is get a set of plugin hooks
defined for the planner that would allow the advisor to be implemented
entirely as an external module, and then let it be worked on as a
pgfoundry project.  I have some ideas about appropriate design of the
plugin hooks (as mentioned in my review message of a month ago), but I
have to say that getting that done for 8.3 is lower-priority than some of
the other patches.

* [pgsql-patches] Ctid chain following enhancement
   /Pavan Deolasee/

I'm not very excited about this --- it seems to me to complicate the code
in some places that are not in fact performance-critical.  While it
doesn't seem likely to break things, I'm not in favor of reducing code
readability unless a measurable performance improvement can be shown.
Can we have some tests showing this is worthwhile?

* [PATCHES] Error correction for n_dead_tuples 
  /ITAGAKI Takahiro/

Waiting for OldestXmin patch to be accepted or rejected.  However,
regardless of the fate of that patch, I'm concerned that this one creates
an open-loop behavior in which the n_dead_tuples estimate will diverge
arbitrarily far from reality over time.  I criticized the original
proposal on that basis, and I'm not convinced this version fixes it,
because of the fact that stats counter updates occur much later than the
actions they count.  (My recent patch to rate-limit tabstat messages made
that problem worse, but it existed anyway.)  What might make sense is for
vacuum to count the number of dead-but-not-removable tuples it skips over,
and apply that as the value of n_dead_tuples on receipt of the vacuum
message (instead of setting to zero as now).  This is likely to be wrong
with respect to the actions of transactions running concurrently with the
vacuum, but I think so is the proposed patch; and at least in this form
the error certainly cannot accumulate across vacuum cycles.

* [PATCHES] Table function support  /Pavel Stehule/

Neil has promised to review this.  AFAIK there are no showstoppers but
there are some disagreements on the details of the functionality.

* [HACKERS] Grouped Index Tuples  /Heikki Linnakangas/
* [HACKERS] Grouped Index Tuples / Clustered Indexes
   /Heikki Linnakangas/

Needs review.  I'm not sure how many people besides Heikki have really
looked at this (I know I haven't).

* Re: [PATCHES] POSIX shared memory support 
  /Chris Marcellino/

I'm not convinced that we want this at all.  The original proposal was
to provide an alternative for platforms without SysV shmem support,
but the working versions of the patch fail to remove the SysV dependency,
and the portability of this code is itself quite unproven.  Do we really
want to take on maintenance of yet-another shmem implementation just to
let people be lazy about changing their SHMMAX settings?  As best I can
tell the main problem in that department is Darwin, and it'd be a whole
lot simpler if Apple just raised their darn default SHMMAX to something
that's sensible for the 21st century.

[BTW, there was a 

Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue triage

2007-05-01 Thread Greg Smith

On Tue, 1 May 2007, Tom Lane wrote:


* Re: [PATCHES] Synchronized Scan WIP patch
 /Simon Riggs/
Heikki is reviewing this one.  Also I believe Greg Smith is doing more
performance testing.


Actually it was the Automatic adjustment of bgwriter_lru_maxpages patch 
from Itagaki Takahiro I've been working on--which, by the way, Bruce sent 
out a note about the other day saying was already booted into 8.4.  I've 
integrated a part of the LRU patch usefully into the new pg_stat_bgwriter, 
renamed some variables around accordingly, cleanup I felt had to preceed 
performance testing.  Heikki might want to wait for me to finish that 
before putting time into it.  The buffer allocation monitoring part would 
be useful to apply even if the GUC and behavior changes are deemed outside 
of the 8.3 scope.


Also, I think I was the most vocal participant in the COPY-able sql log 
outputs feature discussion and therefore was planning to do what review 
what I can of the final patch API immediately afterwards.  I try not to 
complain about things unless I'm willing to help fix them.


--
* Greg Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD


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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue triage

2007-05-01 Thread Tom Lane
Greg Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 On Tue, 1 May 2007, Tom Lane wrote:
 * Re: [PATCHES] Synchronized Scan WIP patch
 /Simon Riggs/
 Heikki is reviewing this one.  Also I believe Greg Smith is doing more
 performance testing.

 Actually it was the Automatic adjustment of bgwriter_lru_maxpages patch 
 from Itagaki Takahiro I've been working on--which, by the way, Bruce sent 
 out a note about the other day saying was already booted into 8.4.

It's still on the patch queue list, and Heikki and I were assuming it
was still live.

 I've 
 integrated a part of the LRU patch usefully into the new pg_stat_bgwriter, 
 renamed some variables around accordingly, cleanup I felt had to preceed 
 performance testing.  Heikki might want to wait for me to finish that 
 before putting time into it.  The buffer allocation monitoring part would 
 be useful to apply even if the GUC and behavior changes are deemed outside 
 of the 8.3 scope.

 Also, I think I was the most vocal participant in the COPY-able sql log 
 outputs feature discussion and therefore was planning to do what review 
 what I can of the final patch API immediately afterwards.  I try not to 
 complain about things unless I'm willing to help fix them.

Great, you're on the hook for both of those ;-)

regards, tom lane

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue triage

2007-05-01 Thread Pavan Deolasee

On 5/2/07, Tom Lane [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:




* [pgsql-patches] Ctid chain following enhancement
   /Pavan Deolasee/

I'm not very excited about this --- it seems to me to complicate the code
in some places that are not in fact performance-critical.  While it
doesn't seem likely to break things, I'm not in favor of reducing code
readability unless a measurable performance improvement can be shown.
Can we have some tests showing this is worthwhile?




I am OK with dropping this for the time being. It came out of code
reading. I would later run some tests to see if it really gives any
performance benefit.


Thanks,
Pavan

--

EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com


Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue concern

2007-03-29 Thread Zeugswetter Andreas ADI SD

  My feeling is we should have more regular sync points where the
patch 
  queue is emptied and everything committed or rejected.
 
 No doubt, but the real problem here is that 
 reviewing/committing other people's patches is not fun, it's 
 just work :-(.  So it's no surprise that it tends to get put 
 off.  Not sure what to do about that.

In my experience it mostly pays to keep people directly responsible for
their own work.
Every intermediate tester/reviewer/coordinator tends to reduce the
submitter's feeling for responsibility.
So I could imagine a modus operandi where a submitter states:
I feel confident that you can commit without review and will be availabe
for fixes/additional work required.
Maybe we have that in the form of committers that commit their own work
already.

But I do feel that some patches Bruce is talking about need aggreement
and help, not only review.

Andreas

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue concern

2007-03-29 Thread Simon Riggs
On Thu, 2007-03-29 at 01:34 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
 Simon Riggs [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
  My feeling is we should have more regular sync points where the patch
  queue is emptied and everything committed or rejected.
 
 No doubt, but the real problem here is that reviewing/committing other
 people's patches is not fun, it's just work :-(.  

Gosh, you always seemed to enjoy my patches so much ;-)

We can all see how hard you and Bruce work and its very much
appreciated, even if we don't often say so. That's why everybody else
works so hard too. Sometimes we only communicate the tensions caused by
external expectations.

 So it's no surprise
 that it tends to get put off.  Not sure what to do about that.

Well, one thing I can do is say Thanks now and try to do that more
regularly in the future.

The enjoyment you and others take from working on PostgreSQL is
infectious, so whatever else we do its gotta stay fun.

-- 
  Simon Riggs 
  EnterpriseDB   http://www.enterprisedb.com



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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue concern

2007-03-29 Thread Gregory Stark

Tom Lane [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 Simon Riggs [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 My feeling is we should have more regular sync points where the patch
 queue is emptied and everything committed or rejected.

 No doubt, but the real problem here is that reviewing/committing other
 people's patches is not fun, it's just work :-(.  So it's no surprise
 that it tends to get put off.  Not sure what to do about that.

Obviously a big part of that is that we just don't have enough committers. I'm
hopeful that in time that situation will improve but in the meantime we do
have a problem and the burden falls unfairly on a few.

Is there anything others can do to help? If non-committers like Simon or I
reviewed patches would it be easier for you to give a quick agreement to the
comments or that's not an issue comment?

It seems like we do have a few committers who should be able to review code
quality but are uncertain about making major design decisions. If, for
example, Bruce or Jan reviewed patches more invasive than they usually do for
code quality and checked with you on design questions would that be helpful?

-- 
  Gregory Stark
  EnterpriseDB  http://www.enterprisedb.com


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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue concern

2007-03-29 Thread Andrew Dunstan

Gregory Stark wrote:

Obviously a big part of that is that we just don't have enough committers. I'm
hopeful that in time that situation will improve but in the meantime we do
have a problem and the burden falls unfairly on a few.

Is there anything others can do to help? If non-committers like Simon or I
reviewed patches would it be easier for you to give a quick agreement to the
comments or that's not an issue comment?

It seems like we do have a few committers who should be able to review code
quality but are uncertain about making major design decisions. If, for
example, Bruce or Jan reviewed patches more invasive than they usually do for
code quality and checked with you on design questions would that be helpful?

  


I try to review things that I feel are well within my area of competence 
(e.g plperl, sql level commands) but I feel more hesitant about things 
very deep inside the backend - there's more danger I'll miss something 
subtle there.


Outside events have conspired to make both reviewing and coding harder 
for me to get done this cycle.


As for major design decisions, these should not be in the hands of a 
reviewer anyway - they should be explicitly discussed on list.


There is plenty of scope for people to review patches if they aren't 
committers. In fact, it is highly encouraged. Please review anything on 
the patch list you feel able to.



cheers

andrew

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue concern

2007-03-29 Thread Tom Lane
Andrew Dunstan [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 There is plenty of scope for people to review patches if they aren't 
 committers. In fact, it is highly encouraged. Please review anything on 
 the patch list you feel able to.

Sure.  Even if you miss things, every problem you do spot is one less...
and there's no guarantee that the eventual committer would have seen it.

regards, tom lane

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue concern

2007-03-29 Thread Bruce Momjian
Gregory Stark wrote:
 
 Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 
  It favours people who are short-sighted and don't see what possible
  improvements their code has. No code in an ongoing project like this is 
  ever
  completed anyways.
 
  It favors those who do not wait until the last minute, but complete them
  well before the freeze date.
 
 What is this complete you keep talking about? Should I stop working on the
 sort/limit patch even though Heikki pointed out a few things to clean up and
 the cost model isn't updated yet just so that you'll consider it complete
 and put it on the patch queue? If I don't stop working on it you think we
 should just ignore it even if it's in a usable state now? Even the cost model
 changes could be done pretty easily with some guidance from a review.

Complete means the author _thinks_ he is done, and has responded to all
community comments on the patch.

  It's also an artifact of the working model we have where patches are sent 
  in
  big chunks and reviewed much later during a feature freeze. If we were
  committing directly into a CVS repository we would have wanted to commit 
  these
  changes as soon as they were ready for committing, not wait until they're
  completed. Then continue working and commit further changes. It's only
 
  This would have CVS containing uncomplete features --- and before beta,
  we would either have to beg the authors to complete them, or rip them
  out, neither of which we want to do.
 
 You don't want to commit something if it's in an unusable state and would have
 to be ripped out without more work. I said as soon as they're ready for
 committing as opposed to completed.
 
 You're asking people if they've stopped working on patches and you're
 surprised to find that there are a lot of patches people are still working on.
 
 That's silly, of course people are still working on them, many of these tasks
 are open ended and can be improved as long as we have time. just because
 they're still working on them doesn't necessarily mean what they have so far
 isn't worth committing as is yet.

We don't want open-ended a few days before feature feeze.  We want them
to be as done, at some complete stopping point, and submitted.

  OK, but we don't want something that is ready to be committed, we need
  it complete.
 
 So how many more releases before you think Postgres is complete? 

I am getting tired of your semantic games, here, Greg. I have no idea
what you are trying to accomplish, but I have better things to do.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB   http://www.enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue concern

2007-03-29 Thread Joshua D. Drake



We don't want open-ended a few days before feature feeze.  We want them
to be as done, at some complete stopping point, and submitted.


OK, but we don't want something that is ready to be committed, we need
it complete.
So how many more releases before you think Postgres is complete? 


I am getting tired of your semantic games, here, Greg. I have no idea
what you are trying to accomplish, but I have better things to do.


I have to concur here. Everyone is doing the best that they can. Greg, 
how about reviewing some patches?


Joshua D. Drake



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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue concern

2007-03-29 Thread Bruce Momjian
Tom Lane wrote:
 Simon Riggs [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
  My feeling is we should have more regular sync points where the patch
  queue is emptied and everything committed or rejected.
 
 No doubt, but the real problem here is that reviewing/committing other
 people's patches is not fun, it's just work :-(.  So it's no surprise
 that it tends to get put off.  Not sure what to do about that.

Of course, writing patches isn't totally _fun_ either.

The big problem is shown in this chart:

   P a t c h   C o m p l e x i t y
Developer   | Simple  Complex
--
Experienced | Easy Medium
Novice  | Medium   Hard

The basic problem is we have a lot of complex patches coming in, and
many from people who do not have years of experience with submitting
patches to PostgreSQL.  A complex patch from a novice user takes a lot
of time to review, and frankly, we don't have enough experienced
developers doing such reviews.  If the patch deals with an area of the
code where I am not experienced, often even I am incapable of reviewing
the patch.

The bottom line is that we are getting more novice developers faster
than we grow experienced developers.  This is no big surprise, and I
don't see a simple solution.  Odds are this is going to continue.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB   http://www.enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue concern

2007-03-29 Thread Bruce Momjian
Gregory Stark wrote:
 
 Tom Lane [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 
  Simon Riggs [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
  My feeling is we should have more regular sync points where the patch
  queue is emptied and everything committed or rejected.
 
  No doubt, but the real problem here is that reviewing/committing other
  people's patches is not fun, it's just work :-(.  So it's no surprise
  that it tends to get put off.  Not sure what to do about that.
 
 Obviously a big part of that is that we just don't have enough committers. I'm
 hopeful that in time that situation will improve but in the meantime we do
 have a problem and the burden falls unfairly on a few.
 
 Is there anything others can do to help? If non-committers like Simon or I
 reviewed patches would it be easier for you to give a quick agreement to the
 comments or that's not an issue comment?

Just to clarify, the committing is the easy part.  I can do that all day
and not break a sweat.  It is making sure the patch is correct in all
aspects --- functionality, clarity, modularity, reliability, design,
etc. that takes lots of time, and really can be done by anyone in the
community.  We already have people commenting on other peoples patches,
and new versions appearing, and every new version makes the final job of
review/commit easier, because someone was going to have to make those
changes before the patch was applied.

 It seems like we do have a few committers who should be able to review code
 quality but are uncertain about making major design decisions. If, for
 example, Bruce or Jan reviewed patches more invasive than they usually do for
 code quality and checked with you on design questions would that be helpful?

I wish that would work, but the big trick is getting the entire problem
into your head, matching user behavior with our existing code, and
making those link up.  There is really no _stage_ nature of final patch
review.  People can still comment on the patch, and improve it, but the
final decision has to be a holistic one that makes sure the entire
patch is in harmony.  (I am sounding new-age here.  :-) )

You might remember during I think 8.1 I started pushing patches because
no one was objecting to the patches, and people complained because the
patches we not complete.  The patches had problems, but I was unable to
fully understand some of the patches, and the patches had to be backed
out.  Since then, I haven't applied anything I didn't fully understand,
so the patches not languish in the patch queue until an experienced
PostgreSQL developer who does fully understand them can give me a green
light on it.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB   http://www.enterprisedb.com

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue concern

2007-03-29 Thread August Zajonc
Bruce Momjian wrote:
 OK, but we don't want something that is ready to be committed, we need
 it complete.
 So how many more releases before you think Postgres is complete? 
 
 I am getting tired of your semantic games, here, Greg. I have no idea
 what you are trying to accomplish, but I have better things to do.

Why not just post a specific list of the patches you are thinking of? Is
it the patch queue list in total? Did I miss it?

Without specifics these things just spiral on forever, as all debates
about code do when there is no code to actually look at.

With specifics it is self documenting and definitional. You are thinking
/ concerned about x patches. Folks can look at how to move them forward,
and it would probably help guide community attention.





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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue concern

2007-03-29 Thread Tom Lane
Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 The basic problem is we have a lot of complex patches coming in, and
 many from people who do not have years of experience with submitting
 patches to PostgreSQL.  A complex patch from a novice user takes a lot
 of time to review, and frankly, we don't have enough experienced
 developers doing such reviews.

Part of the issue is that we have a lot of new developers who are trying
to solve hard problems without having learned their way around the code
by fixing easy stuff.  It was easier some years ago for people to learn
that way, because there was way more low-hanging fruit back then.  But
there's still some out there.  I have a distinct sense that we are
getting patches from people who are trying to run before they've learned
to walk.

regards, tom lane

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue concern

2007-03-28 Thread Pavel Stehule

Hello,

I found in queue patch simply custom variables protection, Pavel Stehule 
which you removed and didn't find my patch for scrollable cursors in 
plpgsql.


Regards
Pavel Stehule

_
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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue concern

2007-03-28 Thread Bruce Momjian
Josh Berkus wrote:
 Bruce,
 
  However, with feature freeze coming on Sunday, I am worried because
  there are a significant number of patches that have are not ready for
  review because they have not been completed by their authors.
 
 Can you flag those somehow?

I have sent out email on every one in the past few days, with the lists
cc'ed.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB   http://www.enterprisedb.com

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue concern

2007-03-28 Thread Gregory Stark
Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 Right now, all the patches I think are ready for review are in the patch
 queue:

   http://momjian.postgresql.org/cgi-bin/pgpatches

 However, with feature freeze coming on Sunday, I am worried because
 there are a significant number of patches that have are not ready for
 review because they have not been completed by their authors.

That seems like a bit of a whacky criterion to use before reviewing a patch.
It favours people who are short-sighted and don't see what possible
improvements their code has. No code in an ongoing project like this is ever
completed anyways.

It's also an artifact of the working model we have where patches are sent in
big chunks and reviewed much later during a feature freeze. If we were
committing directly into a CVS repository we would have wanted to commit these
changes as soon as they were ready for committing, not wait until they're
completed. Then continue working and commit further changes. It's only
because there's a two step process and the reviews are mainly happening during
the feature freeze that there's any sense that some of them are completed.
In fact they're not of course, there will be further changes in the same area
once the freeze is lifted.

I think you should be asking people whether they think the code is in a state
where it can be committed, not whether they've finished working on it. Just
because they see further work that can be done is no reason not to commit
useful patches that are functional as they are.

In fact Postgres historically has had an even looser standard. If the code is
ready to be committed modulo bugs then it's been included in the feature
freeze in the past.

-- 
  Gregory Stark
  EnterpriseDB  http://www.enterprisedb.com


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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue concern

2007-03-28 Thread Simon Riggs
On Tue, 2007-03-27 at 21:15 -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
 Right now, all the patches I think are ready for review are in the patch
 queue:
 
   http://momjian.postgresql.org/cgi-bin/pgpatches
 
 However, with feature freeze coming on Sunday, I am worried because
 there are a significant number of patches that have are not ready for
 review because they have not been completed by their authors.

It's probably a good idea to have a queue of those too, to allow others
to finish them if the original author hasn't/can't/won't. I'm not sure
which ones you mean.

I have at least 2 patches that depend upon other patches in the queue.
I'm not sure how to go about completing them, so any advice or guidance
would be welcome:

- Scan_recycle_buffers depends upon synchronised scans because we agreed
we would use the same parameter (if any exists) to govern the behaviour.
Should I write a patch-on-patch? What happens if the patch changes after
review? ISTM I should just wait until the first one is applied and then
I can make the necessary changes in about an hour. The patch's main
functionality is complete.

- Fast cluster conflicts with Heikki's cluster patch, so one of them
will need fixing depending which is applied first. I don't mind if its
me going second. I also have proposed an additional mode on VACUUM FULL
that builds upon Heikki's patch - should I submit that also, even though
it cannot be applied?

-- 
  Simon Riggs 
  EnterpriseDB   http://www.enterprisedb.com



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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue concern

2007-03-28 Thread Bruce Momjian
Gregory Stark wrote:
 Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 
  Right now, all the patches I think are ready for review are in the patch
  queue:
 
  http://momjian.postgresql.org/cgi-bin/pgpatches
 
  However, with feature freeze coming on Sunday, I am worried because
  there are a significant number of patches that have are not ready for
  review because they have not been completed by their authors.
 
 That seems like a bit of a whacky criterion to use before reviewing a patch.

wacky?

 It favours people who are short-sighted and don't see what possible
 improvements their code has. No code in an ongoing project like this is ever
 completed anyways.

It favors those who do not wait until the last minute, but complete them
well before the freeze date.

 It's also an artifact of the working model we have where patches are sent in
 big chunks and reviewed much later during a feature freeze. If we were
 committing directly into a CVS repository we would have wanted to commit these
 changes as soon as they were ready for committing, not wait until they're
 completed. Then continue working and commit further changes. It's only

This would have CVS containing uncomplete features --- and before beta,
we would either have to beg the authors to complete them, or rip them
out, neither of which we want to do.

 because there's a two step process and the reviews are mainly happening during
 the feature freeze that there's any sense that some of them are completed.
 In fact they're not of course, there will be further changes in the same area
 once the freeze is lifted.
 
 I think you should be asking people whether they think the code is in a state
 where it can be committed, not whether they've finished working on it. Just
 because they see further work that can be done is no reason not to commit
 useful patches that are functional as they are.

OK, but we don't want something that is ready to be committed, we need
it complete.

 In fact Postgres historically has had an even looser standard. If the code is
 ready to be committed modulo bugs then it's been included in the feature
 freeze in the past.

Well, if we know something has bugs, we fix them.  Things are committed
with bugs only because we don't know it has bugs when it was committed.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB   http://www.enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue concern

2007-03-28 Thread Bruce Momjian
Simon Riggs wrote:
 On Tue, 2007-03-27 at 21:15 -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
  Right now, all the patches I think are ready for review are in the patch
  queue:
  
  http://momjian.postgresql.org/cgi-bin/pgpatches
  
  However, with feature freeze coming on Sunday, I am worried because
  there are a significant number of patches that have are not ready for
  review because they have not been completed by their authors.
 
 It's probably a good idea to have a queue of those too, to allow others
 to finish them if the original author hasn't/can't/won't. I'm not sure
 which ones you mean.

At this point, with four days left before feature freeze, if the authors
don't finish them, I doubt someone else is going to be able to do it.

 I have at least 2 patches that depend upon other patches in the queue.
 I'm not sure how to go about completing them, so any advice or guidance
 would be welcome:
 
 - Scan_recycle_buffers depends upon synchronised scans because we agreed
 we would use the same parameter (if any exists) to govern the behaviour.
 Should I write a patch-on-patch? What happens if the patch changes after
 review? ISTM I should just wait until the first one is applied and then
 I can make the necessary changes in about an hour. The patch's main
 functionality is complete.

Yes, that is fine.  I was unaware that is why the patch wasn't done.
Once synchronised scans is in, I will go back to you and ask for a new
version against CVS.  I will put your email in the patch queue as a
reminder.

 - Fast cluster conflicts with Heikki's cluster patch, so one of them
 will need fixing depending which is applied first. I don't mind if its
 me going second. I also have proposed an additional mode on VACUUM FULL
 that builds upon Heikki's patch - should I submit that also, even though
 it cannot be applied?

OK, same rules.  I am just glad that is all that was hold them up.  I
was worried.  What about the delayed fsync patch?

-- 
  Bruce Momjian  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB   http://www.enterprisedb.com

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue concern

2007-03-28 Thread Joshua D. Drake

at seems like a bit of a whacky criterion to use before reviewing a patch.


wacky?


It favours people who are short-sighted and don't see what possible
improvements their code has. No code in an ongoing project like this is ever
completed anyways.


It favors those who do not wait until the last minute, but complete them
well before the freeze date.


But wouldn't it hurt those that are continuously working the patch with 
the community? Just asking.





It's also an artifact of the working model we have where patches are sent in
big chunks and reviewed much later during a feature freeze. If we were
committing directly into a CVS repository we would have wanted to commit these
changes as soon as they were ready for committing, not wait until they're
completed. Then continue working and commit further changes. It's only


This would have CVS containing uncomplete features --- and before beta,
we would either have to beg the authors to complete them, or rip them
out, neither of which we want to do.


I agree here.


I think you should be asking people whether they think the code is in a state
where it can be committed, not whether they've finished working on it. Just
because they see further work that can be done is no reason not to commit
useful patches that are functional as they are.


OK, but we don't want something that is ready to be committed, we need
it complete.


Right, feature complete does not mean bug free that is what the testing 
period is for.





In fact Postgres historically has had an even looser standard. If the code is
ready to be committed modulo bugs then it's been included in the feature
freeze in the past.


Well, if we know something has bugs, we fix them.  Things are committed
with bugs only because we don't know it has bugs when it was committed.


Yep :)

Joshua D. Drake


--

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue concern

2007-03-28 Thread Bruce Momjian
Joshua D. Drake wrote:
 at seems like a bit of a whacky criterion to use before reviewing a patch.
  
  wacky?
  
  It favours people who are short-sighted and don't see what possible
  improvements their code has. No code in an ongoing project like this is 
  ever
  completed anyways.
  
  It favors those who do not wait until the last minute, but complete them
  well before the freeze date.
 
 But wouldn't it hurt those that are continuously working the patch with 
 the community? Just asking.

Yea, it might, and it certainly hampers complex patches.  I was caught
up on the patch queue until the start of March, when I went on vacation,
Tom started on cache invalidation, _and_ more complex patches started
appearing.  With those three, we had a perfect storm and the patch queue
has gotten clogged, and I am afraid it isn't going to get unclogged
until after feature freeze.  I talked to Tom about this yesterday and he
and I feel there isn't much we can do to change that, in the sense we
are already doing the best we can, and clearing the remaining patches
after feature freeze isn't that bad.  One thing committers have to be
willing to do is to give authors ample time after feature freeze to
adjust patches after receiving feedback, because technically they should
have received feedback _before_ feature freeze.  Hopefully this will not
significantly lengthen feature freeze.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB   http://www.enterprisedb.com

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue concern

2007-03-28 Thread Simon Riggs
On Wed, 2007-03-28 at 15:48 -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
 What about the delayed fsync patch?

All complete bar two fiddly items, as of Mar 11, design-to-complete
posted along with patch.

Working on those now.

-- 
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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue concern

2007-03-28 Thread Gregory Stark

Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 Simon Riggs wrote:

 It's probably a good idea to have a queue of those too, to allow others
 to finish them if the original author hasn't/can't/won't. I'm not sure
 which ones you mean.

 At this point, with four days left before feature freeze, if the authors
 don't finish them, I doubt someone else is going to be able to do it.

This isn't the standard that we've used in the past. In the past patches that
are mostly done and need some extra work done to polish them off are
considered to have met the feature freeze. 

In any case I think Simon and you have fallen into the trap of thinking of
development as a single-person project. Most developers here, especially
first-time contributors, don't just work in the dark on their own and turn up
with a finished patch. They have questions and need help in areas. If you
insist on a finished patch before you even consider reviewing their work
it's not going to work.

-- 
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  EnterpriseDB  http://www.enterprisedb.com


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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue concern

2007-03-28 Thread Bruce Momjian
Gregory Stark wrote:
 
 Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 
  Simon Riggs wrote:
 
  It's probably a good idea to have a queue of those too, to allow others
  to finish them if the original author hasn't/can't/won't. I'm not sure
  which ones you mean.
 
  At this point, with four days left before feature freeze, if the authors
  don't finish them, I doubt someone else is going to be able to do it.
 
 This isn't the standard that we've used in the past. In the past patches that
 are mostly done and need some extra work done to polish them off are
 considered to have met the feature freeze. 

My assumption is if authors don't finish them in the next few days, they
are unlikely to finish them during some grace period during feature
freeze.  And the extra time is usually allowed for changes requested by
committers, while at this point the authors aren't done and haven't even
gotten to committer review.

 In any case I think Simon and you have fallen into the trap of thinking of
 development as a single-person project. Most developers here, especially
 first-time contributors, don't just work in the dark on their own and turn up
 with a finished patch. They have questions and need help in areas. If you
 insist on a finished patch before you even consider reviewing their work
 it's not going to work.

Fine, if they need help, let them ask, but many authors are not asking
for help --- they are just not completing the patches.

Or they are going to surprise us by completing them on March 31.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  http://momjian.us
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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue concern

2007-03-28 Thread Simon Riggs
On Wed, 2007-03-28 at 17:02 -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:

 they

It would be good to know who/what you're talking about, specifically.

Some patchers may think they have completed their work.

Not a name-and-shame, just fair warning their work is considered
incomplete and is about to be rejected as a result.

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue concern

2007-03-28 Thread Bruce Momjian
Simon Riggs wrote:
 On Wed, 2007-03-28 at 17:02 -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
 
  they
 
 It would be good to know who/what you're talking about, specifically.
 
 Some patchers may think they have completed their work.
 
 Not a name-and-shame, just fair warning their work is considered
 incomplete and is about to be rejected as a result.

Not sure how to do this without name-and-shame.  I sent out emails to
the list asking where we were on various open patches.  I can do it
again tomorrow so there is some context in the requests.  Would that
help?

-- 
  Bruce Momjian  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB   http://www.enterprisedb.com

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue concern

2007-03-28 Thread Joshua D. Drake

Bruce Momjian wrote:

Gregory Stark wrote:
  

Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:



Simon Riggs wrote:

  

It's probably a good idea to have a queue of those too, to allow others
to finish them if the original author hasn't/can't/won't. I'm not sure
which ones you mean.


At this point, with four days left before feature freeze, if the authors
don't finish them, I doubt someone else is going to be able to do it.
  

This isn't the standard that we've used in the past. In the past patches that
are mostly done and need some extra work done to polish them off are
considered to have met the feature freeze. 



My assumption is if authors don't finish them in the next few days, they
are unlikely to finish them during some grace period during feature
freeze.  And the extra time is usually allowed for changes requested by
committers, while at this point the authors aren't done and haven't even
gotten to committer review.
  
Well hold on Bruce, that isn't quite fair. I know there are patches in 
this cycle that have been waiting on reviewers/comitters not the other 
way around.
Clustered indexes for example. I know that Gavin is this close to 
having vacuum finished for bitmap index on disk. Alvaro's vacuum patch 
isn't done

either, although he has submitted WIP.

Perhaps it makes sense to say:

Feature Freeze: April 1st., no new patches accepted for 8.3
Patch Freeze April 15th., Authors have until the 15th to address any 
committer concerns


?

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

  



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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue concern

2007-03-28 Thread Bruce Momjian
Joshua D. Drake wrote:
  My assumption is if authors don't finish them in the next few days, they
  are unlikely to finish them during some grace period during feature
  freeze.  And the extra time is usually allowed for changes requested by
  committers, while at this point the authors aren't done and haven't even
  gotten to committer review.

 Well hold on Bruce, that isn't quite fair. I know there are patches in 
 this cycle that have been waiting on reviewers/comitters not the other 
 way around.
 Clustered indexes for example. I know that Gavin is this close to 
 having vacuum finished for bitmap index on disk. Alvaro's vacuum patch 
 isn't done
 either, although he has submitted WIP.

Yes, for one, I am worried about bitmap indexes, and the performance
testing time we are going to need to decide if we want it.  

In general, I am more concerned about patches where I don't see public
patches/commit, like bitmap indexes, rather than patches like HOT that
are being publicly advanced.  All the patches might be advancing, but of
course, I only see the public ones, and those are the only ones I can
guess are near completion.

I am speaking of my concerns now, rather than after feature freeze,
because author options are more limited after feature freeze.


 Perhaps it makes sense to say:
 
 Feature Freeze: April 1st., no new patches accepted for 8.3
 Patch Freeze April 15th., Authors have until the 15th to address any 
 committer concerns

Well, I am OK with that, but we need _community_ agreement on that.

I realize it isn't fair that committers are behind on patches, while we
are expecting submitters to make the deadline, but there are far fewer
committers than submitters, and there was never a promise to commit
everything before feature freeze.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  http://momjian.us
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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue concern

2007-03-28 Thread Joshua D. Drake





Perhaps it makes sense to say:

Feature Freeze: April 1st., no new patches accepted for 8.3
Patch Freeze April 15th., Authors have until the 15th to address any 
committer concerns


Well, I am OK with that, but we need _community_ agreement on that.

I realize it isn't fair that committers are behind on patches, while we
are expecting submitters to make the deadline, but there are far fewer
committers than submitters, and there was never a promise to commit
everything before feature freeze.


Yeah that was kind of my thinking is that everyone knows that the 
committers are behind (and overworked). So if we have this two week 
breather where it is all about patch review...


Joshua D. Drake



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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue concern

2007-03-28 Thread Simon Riggs
On Wed, 2007-03-28 at 17:12 -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
 Simon Riggs wrote:
  On Wed, 2007-03-28 at 17:02 -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
  
   they
  
  It would be good to know who/what you're talking about, specifically.
  
  Some patchers may think they have completed their work.
  
  Not a name-and-shame, just fair warning their work is considered
  incomplete and is about to be rejected as a result.
 
 Not sure how to do this without name-and-shame.  I sent out emails to
 the list asking where we were on various open patches.  I can do it
 again tomorrow so there is some context in the requests.  Would that
 help?

Please publish the list. I'm sure it will raise eyebrows, but we can
sort out any misunderstandings; there's no shame in attempting something
and meeting a blockage - thats normal.

If everybody knows where everybody stands then we'll all be better off.
There may be other dependencies that need resolution, or last minute
decisions required to allow authors to finish.

Plus I want to check whether I'm on it, or not.

-- 
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  EnterpriseDB   http://www.enterprisedb.com



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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue concern

2007-03-28 Thread Jeremy Drake
On Wed, 28 Mar 2007, Simon Riggs wrote:

 On Wed, 2007-03-28 at 17:12 -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:

 If everybody knows where everybody stands then we'll all be better off.
 There may be other dependencies that need resolution, or last minute
 decisions required to allow authors to finish.

Wasn't this the purpose of the wiki page that was set up?  I notice it has
not been updated in a while...

http://developer.postgresql.org/index.php/Todo:WishlistFor83

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue concern

2007-03-28 Thread Simon Riggs
On Wed, 2007-03-28 at 17:37 -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:

 I realize it isn't fair that committers are behind on patches, while we
 are expecting submitters to make the deadline, but there are far fewer
 committers than submitters, and there was never a promise to commit
 everything before feature freeze.

I'm expecting to review patches after freeze and I'm much more free to
do that now than I have been previously. It seems important we have a
tiered review process so that some of the more obvious flaws can be
driven out of patches as early as possible. 

If we can set expectations that every developer has to contribute review
time, committer or not, then we'll all be better off. That need not take
away authority from committers, nor give it to reviewers.

Anybody and everybody is certainly welcome to comment on my own patches.


My feeling is we should have more regular sync points where the patch
queue is emptied and everything committed or rejected. That way
rejection is less of a problem and we will all have more opportunity to
build upon each others good work.

-- 
  Simon Riggs 
  EnterpriseDB   http://www.enterprisedb.com



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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue concern

2007-03-28 Thread Gregory Stark

Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 It favours people who are short-sighted and don't see what possible
 improvements their code has. No code in an ongoing project like this is ever
 completed anyways.

 It favors those who do not wait until the last minute, but complete them
 well before the freeze date.

What is this complete you keep talking about? Should I stop working on the
sort/limit patch even though Heikki pointed out a few things to clean up and
the cost model isn't updated yet just so that you'll consider it complete
and put it on the patch queue? If I don't stop working on it you think we
should just ignore it even if it's in a usable state now? Even the cost model
changes could be done pretty easily with some guidance from a review.

 It's also an artifact of the working model we have where patches are sent in
 big chunks and reviewed much later during a feature freeze. If we were
 committing directly into a CVS repository we would have wanted to commit 
 these
 changes as soon as they were ready for committing, not wait until they're
 completed. Then continue working and commit further changes. It's only

 This would have CVS containing uncomplete features --- and before beta,
 we would either have to beg the authors to complete them, or rip them
 out, neither of which we want to do.

You don't want to commit something if it's in an unusable state and would have
to be ripped out without more work. I said as soon as they're ready for
committing as opposed to completed.

You're asking people if they've stopped working on patches and you're
surprised to find that there are a lot of patches people are still working on.

That's silly, of course people are still working on them, many of these tasks
are open ended and can be improved as long as we have time. just because
they're still working on them doesn't necessarily mean what they have so far
isn't worth committing as is yet.

 OK, but we don't want something that is ready to be committed, we need
 it complete.

So how many more releases before you think Postgres is complete? 

-- 
  Gregory Stark
  EnterpriseDB  http://www.enterprisedb.com


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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue concern

2007-03-28 Thread Carlo Florendo

Gregory Stark wrote:

Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
That's silly, of course people are still working on them, many of these tasks
are open ended and can be improved as long as we have time. just because
they're still working on them doesn't necessarily mean what they have so far
isn't worth committing as is yet.


OK, but we don't want something that is ready to be committed, we need
it complete.


So how many more releases before you think Postgres is complete? 


You are using the word complete as in final and unalterable.  That's not, 
it seems to me, what Bruce means.  Bruce has a point, and a valid and 
sensible one at that.


A patch that is ready to be committed does not mean it is usable.  Just 
because you can commit a patch does not mean that the patch will be useful.


Well, if a patch author has promised to supply a patch for the X function, 
and has not completed a stable and generally usable patch for X, then the 
patch is not worth committing.


Thank you very much.

Best Regards,

Carlo

--
Carlo Florendo
Softare Engineer/Network Co-Administrator
Astra Philippines Inc.
UP-Ayala Technopark, Diliman 1101, Quezon City
Philippines
http://www.astra.ph

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue concern

2007-03-28 Thread Carlo Florendo

Gregory Stark wrote:


In any case I think Simon and you have fallen into the trap of thinking of
development as a single-person project. Most developers here, especially
first-time contributors, don't just work in the dark on their own and turn up
with a finished patch. They have questions and need help in areas. If you
insist on a finished patch before you even consider reviewing their work
it's not going to work.


This isn't about finished patches.  It's about commit-worthy patches, 
and since the term is very subjective, there has to be some way for an 
arbiter to be able to say that such a patch is worth committing.  And I 
think the arbiter should not come from any of the two opposing sides with 
diametrically opposed claims or opinions.


Thank you very much.

Best Regards,

Carlo


--
Carlo Florendo
Softare Engineer/Network Co-Administrator
Astra Philippines Inc.
UP-Ayala Technopark, Diliman 1101, Quezon City
Philippines
http://www.astra.ph

--
The Astra Group of Companies
5-3-11 Sekido, Tama City
Tokyo 206-0011, Japan
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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue concern

2007-03-28 Thread Tom Lane
Simon Riggs [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 My feeling is we should have more regular sync points where the patch
 queue is emptied and everything committed or rejected.

No doubt, but the real problem here is that reviewing/committing other
people's patches is not fun, it's just work :-(.  So it's no surprise
that it tends to get put off.  Not sure what to do about that.

regards, tom lane

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[HACKERS] Patch queue concern

2007-03-27 Thread Bruce Momjian
Right now, all the patches I think are ready for review are in the patch
queue:

http://momjian.postgresql.org/cgi-bin/pgpatches

However, with feature freeze coming on Sunday, I am worried because
there are a significant number of patches that have are not ready for
review because they have not been completed by their authors.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB   http://www.enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue concern

2007-03-27 Thread Josh Berkus
Bruce,

 However, with feature freeze coming on Sunday, I am worried because
 there are a significant number of patches that have are not ready for
 review because they have not been completed by their authors.

Can you flag those somehow?

-- 
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL @ Sun
San Francisco

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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue

2007-02-05 Thread Jaime Casanova

On 1/30/07, Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

FYI, I have been working all January to process 8.3 held patches/ideas,
plus process the items arriving during the month.  While I have been
able to make some progress, there are still a significant number of
items for me to address.  I will keep working on it and try to complete
it by mid-February.



i think this does not belong to any queue ;)

http://momjian.us/mhonarc/patches/msg6.html
at http://momjian.postgresql.org/cgi-bin/pgpatches

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regards,
Jaime Casanova

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build bigger and better idiot-proof programs and the universe trying
to produce bigger and better idiots.
So far, the universe is winning.
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Re: [HACKERS] Patch queue

2007-02-05 Thread Bruce Momjian
Jaime Casanova wrote:
 On 1/30/07, Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  FYI, I have been working all January to process 8.3 held patches/ideas,
  plus process the items arriving during the month.  While I have been
  able to make some progress, there are still a significant number of
  items for me to address.  I will keep working on it and try to complete
  it by mid-February.
 
 
 i think this does not belong to any queue ;)
 
 http://momjian.us/mhonarc/patches/msg6.html
 at http://momjian.postgresql.org/cgi-bin/pgpatches

Wow, good one.  I was keeping that for posterity, and put it in the
wrong file.  Thanks.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  EnterpriseDBhttp://www.enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

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