Re: Increase value of OUTER_VAR

Aleksander Alekseev <aleksander(at)timescale(dot)com> writes:
> +1. The proposed changes will be beneficial in the long term. They
> will affect existing extensions. However, the scale of the problem
> seems to be exaggerated.

Yeah, after thinking more about this I agree we should just do it.
I do not say that David's concerns about effects on extensions are
without merit, but I do think he's overblown it a bit. Most of
the patch is s/Index/int/ for various variables, and as I mentioned
before, that's basically cosmetic; there's no strong reason why
extensions have to follow suit. (In the attached v2, I modified
IS_SPECIAL_VARNO() as discussed, so it will do the right thing
even if the input is declared as Index.) There may be a few
places where extensions need to add explicit IS_SPECIAL_VARNO()
calls, but not many, and I doubt they'll be hard to find.

The alternative of increasing the values of OUTER_VAR et al
is not without risk to extensions either, so on the whole
I don't think this patch is any more problematic than many
other things we commit with little debate.

In any case, since it's still very early in the v15 cycle,
there is plenty of time for people to find problems. If I'm
wrong and there are serious consequences, we can always revert
this and do it the other way.

(v2 below is a rebase up to HEAD; no actual code changes except
for adjusting the definition of IS_SPECIAL_VARNO.)

regards, tom lane