Re: Eliminating VACUUM FULL WAS: remove flatfiles.c

Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> On Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 4:01 PM, Tom Lane<tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
>> Hmm ... reading that over again, it seems like there is a pretty
>> obvious solution.

> This doesn't seem totally horrible. But, before you go do it, do we
> have a clearly-defined plan for the rest of the project?

Rest of what project? Removing vacuum full isn't a necessary component
of that. It would enable doing CLUSTER on pg_class, and it would
eliminate the crock of REINDEX having to reindex shared indexes
in-place. It could probably be justified even without any changes in
our approach to vacuum.

> ... only need this if we're absolutely confident that rewriting the table
> in place is just not an option worth keeping around. It's unclear to
> me that everyone is convinced of that, and even if they are, it's
> unclear to me what we plan to implement instead.

I thought we were pretty well agreed that a seqscan variant of
CLUSTER would be worth doing. Whether we take the next step by
eliminating vacuum full is a different question, but the shape of
the substitute seems perfectly clear.

regards, tom lane