Re: [PATCH] Clarify the behavior of the system when approaching XID wraparound

On Thu, Oct 12, 2023 at 8:54 AM Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> - I find the use of the word "generate" in error messages slightly
> odd. I think it's reasonable given the existing precedent, but the
> word I would have picked is "assign", which I see is what Aleksander
> actually had in v1. How would people feel about changing the two
> existing messages that say "database is not accepting commands that
> generate new MultiXactIds to avoid wraparound data loss ..." to use
> "assign" instead, and then make the new messages match that?

WFM.

> - I think that 0002 needs a bit of wordsmithing. I will work on that.
> In particular, I don't like this sentence: "It increases downtime,
> makes monitoring impossible, disables replication, bypasses safeguards
> against wraparound, etc." While there's nothing untrue there, it feels
> more like a sentence from a pgsql-hackers email where most people
> participating in the discussion understand the general contours of the
> problem already than like polished documentation that really lays
> things out methodically.

I agree.

> - I'm somewhat inclined to have a go at restructuring these patches a
> bit so that some of the documentation changes can potentially be
> back-patched without back-patching the message changes. Even if we
> eventually decide to back-patch everything or nothing, there are
> wording adjustments spread across all 3 patches that seem somewhat
> independent of the changes to the server messages. I think it would be
> clearer to have one patch that is mostly about documentation wording
> changes, and a second one that is about changing the server messages
> and then making documentation changes that are directly dependent on
> those message changes. And I might also be inclined to back-patch the
> former patch as far as it makes sense to do so, while leaving the
> latter one master-only.

No objections from me.

--
Peter Geoghegan