Re: release notes

Tim Bunce wrote:
> On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 11:34:37AM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
>
>> Andrew Dunstan <andrew(at)dunslane(dot)net> writes:
>>
>>> Why do the release notes say this, under plperl:
>>> * PL/Perl subroutines are now given names (Tim Bunce)
>>> This is for the use of profiling and code coverage tools. DIDN'T
>>> THEY HAVE NAMES BEFORE?
>>>
>>> If whoever put this in the release notes had bothered to ask I am sure
>>> we would have been happy to explain.
>>>
>> You don't need to complain, just fix it. The point of the comment is
>> that more explanation is needed.
>>
>
> I think you can just delete it. It's too esoteric to be worth noting.
>
> Tim.
>
> p.s. It also turned to be insufficiently useful for NYTProf since it
> doesn't also update some internals to record the 'filename' and line
> number range of the sub. So PostgreSQL::PLPerl::NYTProf works around
> that by wrapping mkfuncsrc() to edit the generated perl code to include
> a subname in the usual "sub $name { ... }" style. I may offer a patch
> for 9.1 to to make it work that way.
>
>
I put this aside to think about it.

If the "feature" is not any use should we rip it out? We pretty much
included it because you said it was what you needed for the profiler.

I'm seriously nervous about adding function names - making functions
directly callable like that could be a major footgun recipe, since now
we are free to hide some stuff in the calling mechanism, and can (and
have in the past) changed that to suit our needs, e.g. when we added
trigger support via a hidden function argument. That has been safe
precisely because nobody has had a handle on the subroutine which would
enable it to be called directly from perl code. There have been
suggestions in the past of using this for other features, so we should
not assume that the calling mechanism is fixed in stone.

Perhaps we could decorate the subs with attributes, or is that not
doable for anonymous subs?

cheers

andrew