Re: Continuing instability in insert-conflict-specconflict test

On Sun, Jun 13, 2021 at 04:49:04PM -0700, Andres Freund wrote:
> On 2021-06-13 15:22:12 -0700, Noah Misch wrote:
> > On Sun, Jun 13, 2021 at 06:09:20PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> > > We might be able to get rid of the stuff about concurrent step
> > > completion in isolationtester.c if we required the spec files
> > > to use annotations to force a deterministic step completion
> > > order in all such cases.
> > 
> > Yeah.  If we're willing to task spec authors with that, the test program can't
> > then guess wrong under unusual timing.
> 
> I think it'd make it *easier* for spec authors. Right now one needs to
> find some way to get a consistent ordering, which is often hard and
> complicates tests way more than specifying an explicit ordering
> would. And it's often unreliable, as evidenced here and in plenty other
> tests.

Fine with me.  Even if it weren't easier for spec authors, it shifts efforts
to spec authors and away from buildfarm observers, which is a good thing.