Horton

Re: AIX support - alignment issues

Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>

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From: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>
To: Peter Geoghegan <pg@bowt.ie>
Cc: Noah Misch <noah@leadboat.com>, PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Date: 2022-07-02T19:42:05Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers 
Hi,

On 2022-07-02 11:54:16 -0700, Peter Geoghegan wrote:
> I tend to agree about dropping AIX. But I wonder if there is an
> argument against that proposal that doesn't rely on AIX being relevant
> to at least one user. Has supporting AIX ever led to the discovery of
> a bug that didn't just affect AIX?

Yes, it clearly has. But I tend to think that that's far outweighed by the
complications triggered by AIX support. It'd be a different story if AIX
hadn't a very peculiar linking model and was more widely accessible.


> What is the best argument *against* desupporting AIX that you know of?

Hm.

- a distinct set of system libraries that can help find portability issues

- With IBM's compiler it adds a, not otherwise used, compiler that PG builds
  with. So the warnings could theoretically help find issues that we wouldn't
  otherwise see - but I don't think that's been particularly useful (nor
  monitored). And the compiler is buggy enough to add a fair bit work over the
  years.


> Desupporting AIX doesn't mean that any AIX users will be left in the
> lurch immediately. Obviously these users will be able to use a
> supported version of Postgres for several more years.

Right.

Greetings,

Andres Freund

Commits

  1. Doc: Acknowledge historically supported CPUs and OSes.

  2. Further tidy-up for old CPU architectures.

  3. Tidy up claimed supported CPUs and OSes.

  4. Remove HP/Intel Itanium support.

  5. Remove HP-UX port.

  6. Reorder subskiplsn in pg_subscription to avoid alignment issues.

  7. Tighten TAP tests' tracking of postmaster state some more.

  8. Reorder pg_sequence columns to avoid alignment issue