Re: WAL & RC1 status

> I am *not* feeling good about pushing out an RC1 release candidate
> today.
> 
> I've been going through the WAL code, trying to understand it and
> document it.  I've found a number of minor problems and several major
> ones ("major" meaning "can't really fix without an incompatible file
> format change, hence initdb").  I've reported the major problems to
> the mailing lists but gotten almost no feedback about what to do.
> 
> In addition, I'm still looking for the bug that I originally went in to
> find: Scott Parish's report of being unable to restart after a normal
> shutdown of beta4.  Examination of his WAL log shows some pretty serious
> lossage (see attached dump).  My current theory is that the
> buffer-slinging logic in xlog.c dropped one or more whole buffers' worth
> of log records, but I haven't figured out exactly how.
> 
> I want to veto putting out an RC1 until these issues are resolved...
> comments?

I was not sure how to respond.  Requiring an initdb at this stage seems
like it could be a pretty major blow to beta testers.  However, if we
will have 7.1 problems with WAL that can not be fixed without a file
format change, we will have problems down the road.  Is there a version
number in the WAL file?  Can we put conditional code in there to create
new log file records with an updated format?

--  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610)
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