Re: Add new protocol message to change GUCs for usage with future protocol-only GUCs

On Sat, 30 Dec 2023 at 00:07, Jelte Fennema-Nio <me(at)jeltef(dot)nl> wrote:
>
> On Fri, 29 Dec 2023 at 19:32, Jeff Davis <pgsql(at)j-davis(dot)com> wrote:
> > That is my biggest concern right now: what will new clients connecting
> > to old servers do?
>
> This is not that big of a deal. Since it's only an addition of a new
> message type, it's completely backwards compatible with the current
> protocol version. i.e. as long as a client just doesn't send it when
> the server reports an older protocol version everything works fine.
> The protocol already has version negotiation built in and the server
> implements it in a reasonable way. The only problem is that no-one
> bothered to implement the client side of it in libpq, because it
> wasn't necessary yet since 3.x only had a single minor version.
>
> Patch v20230911-0003[5] from thread [3] implements client side
> handling in (imho) a sane way.

Okay I updated this patchset to start with better handling of the
NegotiateProtocolVersion packet. The implementation is quite different
from [5] after all, but the core idea is the same. It also allows the
connection to continue to work in case of a missing protocol
extension, which is necessary for the libpq compression patchset[6].
In case the protocol extension is a requirement, the client can still
choose to disconnect by checking the return value of the newly added
PQunsupportedProtocolExtensions function.

I also fixed the tests of my final patch, but haven't changed the
behaviour of it in any of the suggested ways.

[3]: https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/AB607155-8FED-4C8C-B702-205B33884CBB%40yandex-team.ru#961c695d190cdccb3975a157b22ce9d8