Re: Removing faulty hyperLogLog merge function

On Tue, Apr 26, 2016 at 9:35 PM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
>> I'm not prepared to commit this over the objection offered by Tomas
>> Vondra on that thread.
>
> FWIW, I agree with Peter that we should remove this code. We know that it
> is buggy. Leaving it there constitutes an "attractive nuisance" --- that
> is, I'm afraid that someone will submit a patch that depends on that
> function, and that we might forget that the function is broken and commit
> said patch.
>
> Tomas' objection would be reasonable if a fix was simple, but so far as
> I can tell from the thread, it's not. In particular, Peter doesn't trust
> the upstream patch in question. But whether or not you trust it, doing
> nothing is not a sane choice. The reasonable alternatives are to remove
> the merge function or sync the upstream patch.

Now I agree with that. And now we do not have a 1-1 tie on which
alternative to prefer, which is a good start towards a consensus. Any
other views?

--
Robert Haas
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