Re: remove flatfiles.c

Simon Riggs <simon@2ndQuadrant.com> writes:
> VACUUM does so many things that I'd rather have it all safely on disk.
> I'd feel happier with the rule "VACUUM always sync commits", so we all
> remember it and can rely upon it to be the same from release to release.

Non-FULL vacuum has *never* done a sync commit, except in the unusual
corner case that it moves the database's datfrozenxid, which is a corner
case that didn't even exist until fairly recently.  I think the argument
that we should have it force sync for no reason whatsoever is silly.
We get beat up on a regular basis about "spikes" in response time;
why would you want to have vacuum creating one when it doesn't need to?

As for the FULL case, the sync commit is to try to protect a horribly
unsafe kluge that should go away entirely (if vacuum full itself doesn't
go away entirely).  That's hardly something I want to institutionalize
either.
        regards, tom lane