== PostgreSQL Weekly News - October 06 2013 ==

== PostgreSQL Weekly News - October 06 2013 ==

The international CfP for Ecudorian PostgreSQL Day, part of the
International Meeting of Free Software in Quito, Ecuador, is open.
Write ecpug <AT> postgresql <DOT> org. Details (Spanish language)
below:
https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/PGDay_Ecuador_2013

== PostgreSQL Jobs for October ==

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-jobs/2013-10/threads.php

== PostgreSQL Local ==

The Italian PGDay (PGDay.IT) will be held on October the 25th in
Prato, Tuscany, Italy, at Monash University Center.
To register to the event or get information about the accepted talks
and schedule please see the official web site: http://2013.pgday.it

The PostgreSQL Conference China for 2013 will be held October 26-27,
2013 in Hangzhou. Chinese language information here:
https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Pgconf_cn2013
Registration:
http://bbs.pgsqldb.com/client/bm.php

pgconf.EU 2013 will be held on Oct 29-Nov 1, 2013 at the Conrad Hotel
in downtown Dublin, Ireland. Registration is open.
http://2013.pgconf.eu/

PGConf.DE 2013 will be held November 8th, 2013, at the Rhineland
Industrial Museum in Oberhausen. The CfP is open through September
15, 2013.
http://2013.pgconf.de/

The fourth edition of the Argentinian PostgreSQL Day will be held on
November 14 2013 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The CfP deadline is
September 28th, 2013.
http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/PGDay_Argentina_2013

PGDay Cuba will be in November, 2013.
http://postgresql.uci.cu/

== PostgreSQL in the News ==

Planet PostgreSQL: http://planet.postgresql.org/

PostgreSQL Weekly News is brought to you this week by David Fetter

Submit news and announcements by Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific time.
Please send English language ones to david(at)fetter(dot)org, German language
to pwn(at)pgug(dot)de, Italian language to pwn(at)itpug(dot)org(dot) Spanish language
to pwn(at)arpug(dot)com(dot)ar(dot)

== Applied Patches ==

Heikki Linnakangas pushed:

- Fix snapshot leak if lo_open called on non-existent object. lo_open
registers the currently active snapshot, and checks if the large
object exists after that. Normally, snapshots registered by lo_open
are unregistered at end of transaction when the lo descriptor is
closed, but if we error out before the lo descriptor is added to the
list of open descriptors, it is leaked. Fix by moving the snapshot
registration to after checking if the large object exists. Reported
by Pavel Stehule. Backpatch to 8.4. The snapshot registration system
was introduced in 8.4, so prior versions are not affected (and not
supported, anyway).
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/357f7521384df34c697b3544115622520a6a0e9f

- In bms_add_member(), use repalloc() if the bms needs to be enlarged.
Previously bms_add_member() would palloc a whole-new copy of the
existing set, copy the words, and pfree the old one. repalloc() is
potentially much faster, and more importantly, this is less
surprising if CurrentMemoryContext is not the same as the context
the old set is in. bms_add_member() still allocates a new bitmapset
in CurrentMemoryContext if NULL is passed as argument, but that is a
lot less likely to induce bugs. Nicholas White.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/ee01d848f39400c8524c66944ada6fde47894978

- Minor GIN code refactoring. It makes for cleaner code to have
separate Get/Add functions for PostingItems and ItemPointers. A few
callsites that have to deal with both types need to be duplicated
because of this, but all the callers have to know which one they're
dealing with anyway. Overall, this reduces the amount of casting
required. Extracted from Alexander Korotkov's larger patch to
change the data page format.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/c2b175b94851e59765cc87243d8faf923e3d820b

Andrew Dunstan pushed:

- Ensure installation dirs are built before contents are installed
(v2). Push dependency on installdirs down to individual targets.
Christoph Berg
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/eebdea08bb6c185dd7e7542f35565a2c12ab1342

- Add missing condition for pg_depend in hstore migration script.
Error noted by Andres Freund.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/7ce569babddf7bc76657390032cb6cf6793476cc

- Document support for VPATH builds of extensions. Cédric Villemain
and me.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/2e1cb733f96cff04f6c9116c166fec54bc1e18c6

Alvaro Herrera pushed:

- Remove broken PGXS code for pg_xlogdump. With the PGXS boilerplate
in place, pg_xlogdump currently fails with an ominous error message
that certain targets cannot be built because certain files do not
exist. Remove that and instead throw a quick error message alerting
the user of the actual problem, which should be easier to diagnose
that the statu quo. Andres Freund
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/dddc91ddd33d5db07463f2f3f3a044ab98042cf1

- Add WaitForLockers in lmgr, refactoring index.c code. This is in
support of a future REINDEX CONCURRENTLY feature. Michael Paquier
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/15732b34e8c856bf94469b78ab49446430a9c203

- Make some isolationtester specs more complete. Also, make sure they
pass on all transaction isolation levels.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/46d89546546eff837909ce0dbbb3301a97f01145

- isolationtester: Allow tuples to be returned in more places.
Previously, isolationtester would forbid returning tuples in
session-specific teardown (but not global teardown), as well as in
global setup. Allow these places to return tuples, too.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/4f0777ba0fcfc8274b69f39de10f8d905b9f89ba

- add multixact-no-deadlock to schedule
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/1310d4cab21c250f666a173690671cf95eead6b7

- Fix various bugs in postmaster SIGKILL processing. Clamp the
minimum sleep time during immediate shutdown or crash to a minimum
of zero, not a maximum of one second. The previous code could
result in a negative sleep time, leading to failure in select()
calls. Also, on crash recovery, reset AbortStartTime as soon as
SIGKILL is sent or abort processing has commenced instead of waiting
until the startup process completes. Reset AbortStartTime as soon
as SIGKILL is sent, too, to avoid doing that repeatedly. Per
trouble report from Jeff Janes on
CAMkU=1xd3=wFqZwwuXPWe4BQs3h1seYo8LV9JtSjW5RodoPxMg(at)mail(dot)gmail(dot)com
Author: MauMau
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/bf2617981ceb88bdcd3cba58308d68f0c4ea3de2

Bruce Momjian pushed:

- Adjust C comments that would be wrap-able.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/d50f2812108af287879c72b8cc5856d7db5b72b6

- doc: fix hstore_to_json_loose() doc wording
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/eb5d87e5f3b827f5b26fe551006655d80c063d66

- Issue error on SET outside transaction block in some cases. Issue
error for SET LOCAL/CONSTRAINTS/TRANSACTION outside a transaction
block, as they have no effect. Per suggestion from Morten Hustveit
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/a54141aebcafa02cba5204596758dadbbeb0f78e

- pg_upgrade doc: link mode additions. Mention that link mode uses
less disk space, and uses junction points on Windows. Backpatch to
9.3.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/85fa8293ad5621eaa747fbb62681b40d1b15dfa7

Magnus Hagander pushed:

- Fix copy/paste error
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/542131c9e75b6d7bd068e514dae0e2b5ac708203

Peter Eisentraut pushed:

- psql: Set up cancel handler later. The cancel handler was uselessly
set up even before the first connection was opened. By setting it
up afterwards, the user can use Ctrl+C to abort psql if the initial
connection attempt hangs. Reviewed-by: Dean Rasheed
<dean(dot)a(dot)rasheed(at)gmail(dot)com> Reviewed-by: Ryan Kelly
<rpkelly22(at)gmail(dot)com>
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/9099e4afe0e4101bc79f078be3e15639a048e633

- doc: Correct psycopg URL
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/627882d0d8ad34c336b98ceb4eb90940fcd392cc

Robert Haas pushed:

- psql: Make \pset without arguments show all settings. Gilles
Darold, reviewed by Pavel Stehule
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/c64e68fd9f1132fec563fb5de53dc3bcccb5fc3b

- Add DISCARD SEQUENCES command. DISCARD ALL will now discard cached
sequence information, as well. Fabrízio de Royes Mello, reviewed by
Zoltán Böszörményi, with some further tweaks by me.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/d90ced8bb22194cbb45f58beb0961251103aeff5

- Fix silly thinko in ResetSequenceCaches. Report from Kevin Hale
Boyes.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/0f1ef79095762e8e3e908592f0cf37c53da54028

- doc: Add missing words to bgworker docs. Maciek Sakrejda
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/4655b607f34836ae19f262bfdfe95c0be74d920c

Noah Misch pushed:

- pgbench: Elaborate latency reporting. Isolate transaction latency
(elapsed time between submitting first command and receiving
response to last command) from client-side delays pertaining to the
--rate schedule. Under --rate, report schedule lag as defined in
the documentation. Report latency standard deviation whenever we
collect the measurements to do so. All of these changes affect
--progress messages and the final report. Fabien COELHO, reviewed
by Pavel Stehule.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/2d6c0f10ef4f34d757e49a9815c22045d8ba6980

- pgbench: Remove stray use of "float" math. Oversight in commit
4a87f308b33457670f9ab4bc622678e5d285b9c2. Fabien COELHO
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/8e00a3850d4a7729a112967c204fa95b40cc54ca

- pgbench: Comment on thread timing hazards. Reviewed by Fabien
COELHO.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/7db0dc0eac4512253c2ec0e6bea60ecd2d7bea27

== Rejected Patches (for now) ==

No one was disappointed this week :-)

== Pending Patches ==

David Rowley sent in a patch to use AppendStringInfo[type] functions
instead of bare AppendStringInfo in various places throughout the
source code.

Amit Kapila sent in another revision of a patch to implement ALTER
SYSTEM.

Nicholas White sent in two more revisions of a patch to implement
RESPECT/IGNORE NULLS in the LEAD and LAG window functions.

Andres Freund sent another flock of patches intended to be
infrastructure for logical changeset extraction and replay.

Pavel Stehule sent in a patch atop the one for \pset which makes
autocomplete work better.

Heikki Linnakangas sent in another revision of a patch to implement
UNNEST with multiple arguments and TABLE with multiple functions.

Michael Paquier sent in another revision of a patch to implement
REINDEX CONCURRENTLY.

Peter Eisentraut sent in another revision of a patch to use asprintf()
where available.

Oskari Saarenmaa sent in a patch to add file cloning using BTRFS tools
as an alternative data transfer method to pg_upgrade.

Rushabh Lathia sent in another revision of a patch to have INSERT et
al throw an error when a year field has length greater than 4 for the
timestamptz data type.

Kevin Grittner sent in three more revisions of a patch to fix an SSI
freezing bug.

Sawada Masahiko sent in another revision of a patch to allow fail-back
without a fresh backup.

Pavel Stehule sent in two revisions of a patch to optimize updates to
fixed-length arrays.

KaiGai Kohei sent in another revision of a patch to insert machinery
and examples for custom plan nodes.

Sameer Thakur sent in another revision of a patch to extend
pg_stat_statements.

David Rowley sent in another revision of a patch to ensure that his
previous patch to ensure that space reserved for WAL matches what is
written doesn't break on 32-bit machines.

David Rowley sent in two revisions of a patch to improve performance
of the column-wise INSERTs option in pg_dump.

Heikki Linnakangas sent in another revision of a patch to improve GIN
index performance by adding more information to the index.

Marko (johto) Tiikkaja sent in another revision of a patch to add a
plpgsql.print_strict_params GUC and associated machinery.

Noah Misch sent in a documentation patch to hold a place in pgbench
for fixing an issue where estimation and short runs can be noticeably
different.