Re: Overhauling "Routine Vacuuming" docs, particularly its handling of freezing

On Tue, May 2, 2023 at 1:29 PM Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> I told you that I did not agree with your dislike for the term
> wraparound and I explained why. You sent a couple more emails telling
> me that I was wrong and, frankly, saying a lot of things that seem
> only tangentially related to the point that I was actually making.

I agree that that's what I did. You're perfectly entitled to find that
annoying (though I maintain that my point about the 64-bit XID space
was a good one, assuming the general subject matter was of interest).
However, you're talking about this as if I dug my feet in on a
substantive issue affecting the basic shape of the patch -- I don't
believe that that conclusion is justified by anything I've said or
done. I'm not even sure that we disagree on some less important point
that will directly affect the patch (it's quite possible, but I'm not
even sure of it).

I've already said that I don't think that the term wraparound is going
anywhere anytime soon (granted, that was on the other thread). So it's
not like I'm attempting to banish all existing use of that terminology
within the scope of this patch series -- far from it. At most I tried
to avoid inventing new terms that contain the word "wraparound" (also
on the other thread).

The topic originally came up in the context of moving talk about
physical wraparound to an entirely different chapter. Which is, I
believe (based in part on previous discussions), something that all
three of us already agree on! So again, I must ask: is there actually
a substantive disagreement at all?

> It's really demoralizing. If I just vote -1 on the patch set, then I'm
> a useless obstruction. If I actually try to review it, we'll exchange
> 100 emails and I won't get anything else done for the next two weeks
> and I probably won't feel much better about the patch at the end of
> that process than at the beginning. I don't see that I have any
> winning options here.

I've already put a huge amount of work into this. It is inherently a
very difficult thing to get right -- it's not hard to understand why
it was put off for so long. Why shouldn't I have opinions, given all
that? I'm frustrated too.

Despite all this, John basically agreed with my high level direction
-- all of the important points seemed to have been settled without any
arguments whatsoever (also based in part on previous discussions).
John's volley of abuse seemed to come from nowhere at all.

--
Peter Geoghegan