Re: Updates of SE-PostgreSQL 8.4devel patches (r1704)

Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> writes:
> On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 4:04 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>> Now it's not really KaiGai-san's fault;
>> the fundamental problem IMHO is that no one else is taking very much
>> interest in the patch. �But that in itself speaks volumes about whether
>> we actually want this patch or should accept it.

> Are you sure that this isn't just because the original patch was so
> enormous?  If you're referring to reviewing, it's certainly easier to
> find someone willing to review a 100-line patch than it is to find
> someone willing to review a 10,000-line patch.

Well, the huge size of the original patch didn't help any, for sure.
But the nature of this type of problem --- particularly given the
not-designed-for-it architecture we have --- is that there are going to
be a lot of subtle issues and very probably a lot of places to touch.
It gets even worse if you want to put performance constraints on the
result.  I will not have any confidence in SEPostgres until both the
design and the code details have been reviewed by a fair number of
experienced PG hackers; and what I see happening is that there simply
aren't enough of them who care.

If it were a small localized patch I might not particularly care ...
but what I'm afraid of is that we'll have a monstrous patch that does
severe damage to readability and modifiability of the backend, and
has a bunch of bugs to boot (every one of which will qualify as a
security issue when it's discovered).  And on top of that, I'm still
not sold that there is enough of a user base for it to justify the
effort we'll have to put into it.  If there were, we'd be seeing more
interest in reviewing it.
        regards, tom lane