Subject: beta packages and debug_assertions

From: Justin Pryzby <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2025 12:55:58 -0500

Hi,

Historically we've run our product under centos, but more recently have
been running under debian.  Nothing interesting has come up with due to
differences in packaging.

One thing I noticed recently is that the beta RPMs were compiled with
debug assertions, and the DEBs are not.

I wondered that was a deliberate decision.  It might be the biggest
difference I've seen so far between the RPM and DEB packaging.

There's an argument for enabling assertions -- the point of running a
beta release is to catch bugs.  And an argument for keeping them
disabled -- that allows people to do performance testing, and to run the
beta packages in environments where performance can't take a hard hit
(like an internal development environment).

-- 
Justin

---

From: Christoph Berg <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2025 23:01:52 +0200

Re: Justin Pryzby
> debug assertions, and the DEBs are not.

In apt.postgresql.org, ALL packages are compiled with --enable-cassert
in the sid-pgdg suite, while all the other suites have cassert
disabled, independently from the PG version.

It has found some bugs over the years in extensions, but about two
orders of magnitude less than I originally expected when enabling it.

Christoph