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Subject: Re: Fixing WAL instability in various TAP tests
From: Mark Dilger <mark.dilger@enterprisedb.com>
In-Reply-To: <20210925160039.GA4134968@rfd.leadboat.com>
Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2021 11:04:29 -0700
Cc: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>,
 PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
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To: Noah Misch <noah@leadboat.com>
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> On Sep 25, 2021, at 9:00 AM, Noah Misch <noah@leadboat.com> wrote:
>=20
>> You may be right, but the conversation about "all possible settings" =
was
>> started by Noah.
>=20
> You wrote, "I would expect tests which fail under legal alternate GUC =
settings
> to be hardened to explicitly set the GUCs as they need, rather than =
implicitly
> relying on the defaults."  I read that as raising the general =
principle, not
> just a narrow argument about max_wal_size.

In the first draft of my email to Tom, I had language about my inartful =
crafting of my original post that led Noah to respond as he did....  I =
couldn't quite figure out how to phrase that without distracting from =
the main point.  I don't think you were (much) offended, but my =
apologies for any perceived fingerpointing.

I also don't have a problem with your idea of testing in the build farm =
with some animals having the gucs set to minimum values and some to =
maximum and so forth.  I like that idea generally, though don't feel =
competent to predict how much work that would be to maintain, so I'm =
just deferring to Tom's and your judgement about that.

My inartful first post was really meant to say, "here is a problem that =
I perceive about tap tests vis-a-vis wal files, do people disagree with =
me that this is a problem, and would patches to address the problem be =
welcome?"    I took Tom's response to be, "yeah, go ahead", and am =
mostly waiting for the weekend to be over to see if anybody else has =
anything to say about it.

=E2=80=94
Mark Dilger
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company