From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Peter Geoghegan <pg@bowt.ie>
Cc: Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>
Cc: Peter Eisentraut <peter.eisentraut@2ndquadrant.com>
Cc: pgsql-hackers <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: Remove configure --disable-float4-byval and --disable-float8-byval
Date: Fri, 01 Nov 2019 14:00:10 -0400
Message-ID: <15314.1572631210@sss.pgh.pa.us> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAH2-Wzn1tb8cVoo_E4Tn6CC79ashORQVEteZXMjKnzaz_VmgJQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <f3e1e576-2749-bbd7-2d57-3f9dcf75255a@2ndquadrant.com>
<15316.1572528990@sss.pgh.pa.us>
<CA+TgmoaCyw26S7wkTshAJKpjP5zfVnLiBSWYYvn5kT7rh3vrZg@mail.gmail.com>
<CAH2-Wzn1tb8cVoo_E4Tn6CC79ashORQVEteZXMjKnzaz_VmgJQ@mail.gmail.com>
Peter Geoghegan <pg@bowt.ie> writes:
> On Fri, Nov 1, 2019 at 7:41 AM Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Could we get around this by making Datum 8 bytes everywhere?
> I really like that idea.
> Even Raspberry Pi devices (which can cost as little as $35) use 64-bit
> ARM processors. It's abundantly clear that 32-bit platforms do not
> matter enough to justify keeping all the SIZEOF_DATUM crud around.
This line of argument seems to me to be the moral equivalent of
"let's drop 32-bit support altogether". I'm not entirely on board
with that. Certainly, a lot of the world is 64-bit these days,
but people are still building small systems and they might want
a database; preferably one that hasn't been detuned to the extent
that it barely manages to run at all on such a platform. Making
a whole lot of internal APIs 64-bit would be a pretty big hit for
a 32-bit platform --- more instructions, more memory consumed for
things like Datum arrays, all in a memory space that's not that big.
It seems especially insane to conclude that we should pull the plug
on such use-cases just to get rid of one obscure configure option.
If we were expending any significant devel effort on supporting
32-bit platforms, I might be ready to drop support, but we're not.
(Robert's proposal looks to me like it's actually creating new work
to do, not saving work.)
regards, tom lane
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To: pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Cc: tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us, pg@bowt.ie, robertmhaas@gmail.com, peter.eisentraut@2ndquadrant.com
Subject: Re: Remove configure --disable-float4-byval and --disable-float8-byval
In-Reply-To: <15314.1572631210@sss.pgh.pa.us>
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