Re: autovacuum causing numerous regression-test failures

Tom Lane wrote:
>
> My objection here is basically that this proposal passed on the
> assumption that it would be very nearly zero effort to make it happen.
> We are now finding out that we have a fair amount of work to do if we
> want autovac to not mess up the regression tests, and I think that has
> to mean that the proposal goes back on the shelf until 8.3 development
> starts. We are already overcommitted in terms of the stuff that was
> submitted *before* feature freeze.
>

Kicking out autovacuum as default is a disaster, it took far too long to
get in the backend already (wasn't it planned for 8.0?).
You discuss this on the base of the regression tests, which obviously
run on installations that do _not_ represent standard recommended
installations. It's required for ages now to have vacuum running
regularly, using cron or so. The regression tests have to deal with that
default situation, in one way or the other (which might well mean "this
tables don't need vacuum" or "this instance doesn't need vacuum"). IMHO
blaming autovacuum for the test failures reverses cause and effect.

Missing vacuum was probably a reason for poor performance of many newbie
pgsql installations (and I must admit that I missed installing the cron
job myself from time to time, though I _knew_ it was needed). As Magnus
already pointed out, all win32 installations have it on by default, to
take them to the safe side. Disabling it for modules a "retail" user
will never launch appears overreacting.

I can positively acknowledge that disabling autovacuum with a
pg_autovacuum row does work, I'm using it in production.

Regards,
Andreas