Fwd: Extensible storage manager API - SMGR hook Redux

Hi hackers,

At Neon, we've been working on removing the file system dependency
from PostgreSQL and replacing it with a distributed storage layer. For
now, we've seen most success in this by replacing the implementation
of the smgr API, but it did require some core modifications like those
proposed early last year  by Anastasia [0].

As mentioned in the previous thread, there are several reasons why you
would want to use a non-default storage manager: storage-level
compression, encryption, and disk limit quotas [0]; offloading of cold
relation data was also mentioned [1].

In the thread on Anastasia's patch, Yura Sokolov mentioned that
instead of a hook-based smgr extension, a registration-based smgr
would be preferred, with integration into namespaces. Please find
attached an as of yet incomplete patch that starts to do that.

The patch is yet incomplete (as it isn't derived from Anastasia's
patch), but I would like comments on this regardless, as this is a
fairly fundamental component of PostgreSQL that is being modified, and
it is often better to get comments early in the development cycle. One
significant issue that I've seen so far are that catcache is not
guaranteed to be available in all backends that need to do smgr
operations, and I've not yet found a good solution.

Changes compared to HEAD:
- smgrsw is now dynamically allocated and grows as new storage
managers are loaded (during shared_preload_libraries)
- CREATE TABLESPACE has new optional syntax USING smgrname (option [, ...])
- tablespace storage is (planned) fully managed by smgr through some
new smgr apis

Changes compared to Anastasia's patch:
- extensions do not get to hook and replace the api of the smgr code
directly - they are hidden behind the smgr registry.

Successes:
- 0001 passes tests (make check-world)
- 0002 builds without warnings (make)

TODO:
- fix dependency failures when catcache is unavailable
- tablespace redo is currently broken with 0002
- fix tests for 0002
- ensure that pg_dump etc. works with the new tablespace storage manager options

Looking forward to any comments, suggestions and reviews.

Kind regards,

Matthias van de Meent
Neon (https://neon.tech/)


[0] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/CAP4vRV6JKXyFfEOf%3Dn%2Bv5RGsZywAQ3CTM8ESWvgq%2BS87Tmgx_g%40mail.gmail.com
[1] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/D365F19F-BC3E-4F96-A91E-8DB13049749E@yandex-team.ru