Re: [HACKERS] pg_background contrib module proposal

On Wed, Dec 21, 2016 at 10:29 AM, David Fetter <david@fetter.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 21, 2016 at 06:31:52PM +0800, Craig Ringer wrote:
>> On 21 December 2016 at 14:26, Andrew Borodin <borodin@octonica.com> wrote:
>>
>> > I'm not sure every platform supports microsecond sleeps
>>
>> Windows at least doesn't by default, unless that changed in Win2k12
>> and Win8 with the same platform/kernel improvements that delivered
>> https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh706895(v=vs.85).aspx . I'm
>> not sure. On older systems sleeps are 1ms to 15ms.
>
> Apparently, as of 2011, there were ways to do this.  It's not crystal
> clear to me just how reliable they are.
>
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9116618/cpp-windows-is-there-a-sleep-function-in-microseconds

This whole subthread seems like a distraction to me.  I find it hard
to believe that this test case would be stable enough to survive the
buildfarm where, don't forget, we have things like
CLOBBER_CACHE_ALWAYS machines where queries take 100x longer to run.
But even if it is, surely we can pick a less contrived test case.  So
why worry about this?

-- 
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company