Subject: Flaky test in t/100_vacuumdb.pl: ordering assumption not stable under plan changes

From: Andrei Lepikhov <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2026 08:42:58 +0200

Hi,

I found that t/100_vacuumdb.pl has a fragile ordering check that fails 
if the query plan for vacuumdb's catalogue query changes. I sometimes 
see how this test fails when writing an optimisation-related extension.

The test checks that vacuumdb processes "Foo".bar before "Bar".baz:

     qr/VACUUM\ \(SKIP_DATABASE_STATS\)\ "Foo".bar
         .*VACUUM\ \(SKIP_DATABASE_STATS\)\ "Bar".baz
     /sx,

Both tables being tested, "Foo".bar and "Bar".baz, are created empty. 
This means pg_class.relpages is 0 for both and the sort order is 
completely unstable. The output order depends entirely on which query 
plan will be chosen. Any change in the planner that affects the plan for 
this query, such as a new join path type or a cost model change, may 
flip the order and cause the test to fail.

AFAICS, The fix is quite trivial. Change the test regex (in 
100_vacuumdb.pl) to use order-independent lookaheads instead of a 
sequential match:

        qr/(?=.*VACUUM\ \(SKIP_DATABASE_STATS\)\ "Foo"\.bar)
           (?=.*VACUUM\ \(SKIP_DATABASE_STATS\)\ "Bar"\.baz)
        /sx,

This makes the test robust regardless of the order in which the server 
returns results.

Hence, it doesn’t change anything important. I think it deserves to be 
back-patched down to v.16 (like the commit 2143d96dc7b introduced this 
test) so other extensions can be stable with check-world tests.

Regards,
Andrei Lepikhov
pgEdge
From f97e3cae709f921579b265d9307328e8a2515b47 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: "Andrei V. Lepikhov" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2026 08:36:33 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] Fix flaky ordering assertion in t/100_vacuumdb.pl

Both test tables have relpages=0, making ORDER BY c.relpages DESC
unstable.  Replace the sequential regex with order-independent
lookaheads.
---
 src/bin/scripts/t/100_vacuumdb.pl | 4 ++--
 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/src/bin/scripts/t/100_vacuumdb.pl b/src/bin/scripts/t/100_vacuumdb.pl
index cf0b853e9bf..40f87fe11ec 100644
--- a/src/bin/scripts/t/100_vacuumdb.pl
+++ b/src/bin/scripts/t/100_vacuumdb.pl
@@ -175,8 +175,8 @@ $node->issues_sql_unlike(
 	'vacuumdb --dry-run');
 $node->issues_sql_like(
 	[ 'vacuumdb', '--schema' => '"Foo"', '--schema' => '"Bar"', 'postgres' ],
-	qr/VACUUM\ \(SKIP_DATABASE_STATS\)\ "Foo".bar
-		.*VACUUM\ \(SKIP_DATABASE_STATS\)\ "Bar".baz
+	qr/(?=.*VACUUM\ \(SKIP_DATABASE_STATS\)\ "Foo"\.bar)
+	   (?=.*VACUUM\ \(SKIP_DATABASE_STATS\)\ "Bar"\.baz)
 	/sx,
 	'vacuumdb multiple --schema switches');
 $node->issues_sql_like(
-- 
2.53.0

---

From: Daniel Gustafsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2026 12:27:27 +0200

> On 3 Apr 2026, at 08:42, Andrei Lepikhov <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I found that t/100_vacuumdb.pl has a fragile ordering check that fails if the query plan for vacuumdb's catalogue query changes. I sometimes see how this test fails when writing an optimisation-related extension.
> 
> Both tables being tested, "Foo".bar and "Bar".baz, are created empty. This means pg_class.relpages is 0 for both and the sort order is completely unstable. The output order depends entirely on which query plan will be chosen. Any change in the planner that affects the plan for this query, such as a new join path type or a cost model change, may flip the order and cause the test to fail.
> 
> AFAICS, The fix is quite trivial. Change the test regex (in 100_vacuumdb.pl) to use order-independent lookaheads instead of a sequential match:
> 
> This makes the test robust regardless of the order in which the server returns results.
> 
> Hence, it doesn’t change anything important. I think it deserves to be back-patched down to v.16 (like the commit 2143d96dc7b introduced this test) so other extensions can be stable with check-world tests.

Thanks for the report, I'll have a look.

--
Daniel Gustafsson