Re: MultiXact member wraparound protections are now enabled

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 4:11 PM, Peter Eisentraut <peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net> wrote:
> Why is this message logged by default in a fresh installation? The
> technicality of that message doesn't seem to match the kinds of messages
> that we normally print at startup.

It seems nobody likes that message.

I did it that way because I wanted to provide an easy way for users to
know whether they had those protections enabled. If you don't display
the message when things are already OK at startup, users have to make
a negative inference, like this: let's see, I'm on a version that is
new enough that it would have printed a message if the protections had
not been enabled, so the absence of the message must mean things are
OK.

But it seemed to me that this could be rather confusing. I thought it
would be better to be explicit about whether the protections are
enabled in all cases. That way, (1) if you see the message saying
they are enabled, they are enabled; (2) if you see the message saying
they are disabled, they are disabled; and (3) if you see neither
message, your version does not have those protections.

You are not the first person to dislike this, though.

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company