Re: Race condition in SyncRepGetSyncStandbysPriority

Kyotaro Horiguchi <horikyota(dot)ntt(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> [ syncrep-fixes-4.patch ]

I agree that we could probably improve the clarity of this code with
further rewriting, but I'm still very opposed to the idea of having
callers know that the first num_sync array elements are the active
ones. It's wrong (or at least different from current behavior) for
quorum mode, where there might be more than num_sync walsenders to
consider. And it might not generalize very well to other syncrep
selection rules we might add in future, which might also not have
exactly num_sync interesting walsenders. So I much prefer an API
definition that uses bool flags in an array that has no particular
ordering (so far as the callers know, anyway). If you don't like
is_sync_standby, how about some more-neutral name like is_active
or is_interesting or include_position?

I dislike the proposed comment revisions in SyncRepReleaseWaiters,
too, particularly the change to say that what we're "announcing"
is the ability to release waiters. You did not change the actual
log messages, and you would have gotten a lot of pushback if
you tried, because the current messages make sense to users and
something like that would not. But by the same token this new
comment isn't too helpful to somebody reading the code.

(Actually, I wonder why we even have the restriction that only
sync standbys can release waiters. It's not like they are
going to get different results from SyncRepGetSyncRecPtr than
any other walsender would. Maybe we should just drop all the
am_sync logic?)

regards, tom lane