Re: Should vacuum process config file reload more often

Hi,

On 2023-04-03 14:43:14 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> Melanie Plageman <melanieplageman(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> > v13 attached with requested updates.
>
> I'm afraid I'd not been paying any attention to this discussion,
> but better late than never. I'm okay with letting autovacuum
> processes reload config files more often than now. However,
> I object to allowing ProcessConfigFile to be called from within
> commands in a normal user backend. The existing semantics are
> that user backends respond to SIGHUP only at the start of processing
> a user command, and I'm uncomfortable with suddenly deciding that
> that can work differently if the command happens to be VACUUM.
> It seems unprincipled and perhaps actively unsafe.

I think it should be ok in commands like VACUUM that already internally start
their own transactions, and thus require to be run outside of a transaction
and at the toplevel. I share your concerns about allowing config reload in
arbitrary places. While we might want to go there, it would require a lot more
analysis.

Greetings,

Andres Freund