Re: Do we still need gen_node_support.pl's nodetag ABI stability check?

Daniel Gustafsson <daniel@yesql.se>

From: Daniel Gustafsson <daniel@yesql.se>
To: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Cc: Peter Eisentraut <peter@eisentraut.org>, pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org
Date: 2026-04-16T14:33:23Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers
> On 16 Apr 2026, at 03:46, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> 
> Daniel Gustafsson <daniel@yesql.se> writes:
>> On 15 Apr 2026, at 21:30, Peter Eisentraut <peter@eisentraut.org> wrote:
>>> This might still be helpful because it checks during local builds and doesn't rely on the buildfarm.
> 
>> But does it actually give a good enough answer to be relied upon when passing
>> the local check can fail the buildfarm check?
> 
> Yeah, my answer to that is still "why is this particular case more
> important than any other ABI breakage you might cause while hacking
> on a back branch?".  I quite agree that being able to check for ABI
> breakage locally can be useful.  

Agreed.

> But what we ought to do is make it
> easier for people to use libabigail for that without spinning up a
> local buildfarm instance.  Perhaps we could extract the buildfarm's
> ABICompCheck.pm script into some standalone tool.

While I have zero insights into how complicated that would be, off the cuff it
seems like the right approach.

--
Daniel Gustafsson




Commits

Same data as JSON: GET /api/v1/messages/:b64id/commits the thread's linked commits as JSON, with link sources. API reference →
  1. Remove gen_node_support.pl's ad-hoc ABI stability check.

  2. Add defenses against unexpected changes in the NodeTag enum list.