Message-ID: <213ce4a8cc0e481229bdf2198f5c44285eb3e53a.camel@cybertec.at>
Subject: Re: Clarify VACUUM FULL exclusion in total_vacuum_time docs
From: Laurenz Albe <laurenz.albe@cybertec.at>
To: Fujii Masao <masao.fujii@oss.nttdata.com>, Robert Treat <rob@xzilla.net>
Cc: "David G. Johnston" <david.g.johnston@gmail.com>,
 "pgsql-docs@lists.postgresql.org"
	 <pgsql-docs@lists.postgresql.org>
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2025 07:44:17 +0200
In-Reply-To: <b1cfd248-6860-4a95-bb62-07009f5e486e@oss.nttdata.com>
References: <2ac375d1-591b-4f1b-a2af-f24335567866@oss.nttdata.com>
	 <CAKFQuwYgErraNuAUme-6dSwmwNSSStC8SL7560Qy2sAtUG5J+Q@mail.gmail.com>
	 <CABV9wwMs4g9nq-fKy=fFqU-rQUf6fiCqJg4_+MkqOnJE1n2TBA@mail.gmail.com>
	 <f58eb77f-0d8f-4f58-bed2-a100bd7e0814@oss.nttdata.com>
	 <CAJSLCQ3YPKaB7tQDyg8BbVuo80EGn_j6kycNGG3oZB59P8tgrg@mail.gmail.com>
	 <bb97b8d4-2f44-4b95-9b82-a54ecbce9e76@oss.nttdata.com>
	 <CAJSLCQ27T5utjOipbaqArGCPS1VT+2Uqx_g2NH3od_spHxkoig@mail.gmail.com>
	 <b1cfd248-6860-4a95-bb62-07009f5e486e@oss.nttdata.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
User-Agent: Evolution 3.56.2 (3.56.2-1.fc42) 
MIME-Version: 1.0
Archived-At: 
 <https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/213ce4a8cc0e481229bdf2198f5c44285eb3e53a.camel%40cybertec.at>
Precedence: bulk

On Tue, 2025-07-15 at 01:51 +0900, Fujii Masao wrote:
>=20
> On 2025/06/18 6:53, Robert Treat wrote:
> > I think the more cases where you document this behavior (and I do like
> > the idea of documenting it for total_vacuum_time), the more one is
> > likely to think that places where it is not documented operate
> > differently. To that end, I think documenting it for
> > n_ins_since_vacuum as well is a good idea, but I don't feel strongly
> > that it needs to be backpatched; the old documentation wasn't wrong
> > per se, rather this is a documentation improvement as a result of new
> > development.
>=20
> Agreed. The attached patch updates the docs to clarify that both
> total_vacuum_time and n_ins_since_vacuum exclude VACUUM FULL.
>=20
> Unless there are any objections, I'll commit this to master and
> back-patch it to v18 only.

I think the patch is good.

One question for me is whether we should use "VACUUM (FULL)" rather
than "VACUUM FULL".

On the one hand, the documentation (and most users) still use the
old syntax without parentheses almost everywhere.

On the other hand, reading the VACUUM reference page, I get the
feeling that the new syntax with parentheses should be favored.
After all, the old syntax doesn't support any of the recently
added options and restricts the option order.

So perhaps we should start propagating the parentheses more, and
the documentation is the perfect place to do that.

Yours,
Laurenz Albe