Re: why there is not VACUUM FULL CONCURRENTLY?

On 2024-Dec-11, Antonin Houska wrote:

> Oh, it was too messy. I think I was thinking of too many things at once (such
> as locking the old heap, the new heap and the new heap's TOAST). Also, one
> thing that might have contributed to the confusion is that make_new_heap() has
> the 'lockmode' argument, which receives various values from various
> callers. However, both the new heap and its TOAST relation are eventually
> created by heap_create_with_catalog(), and this function always leaves the new
> relation locked in AccessExclusiveMode. Maybe this needs some refactoring.
> 
> Therefore I reverted the changes arount make_new_heap() and simply pass NoLock
> for lockmode in cluster.c

Cool, thanks, I have pushed this.  I made some additional minor changes,
nothing earth-shattering.

Meanwhile the patch 0004 has some seemingly trivial conflicts.  If you
want to rebase, I'd appreciate that.  In the meantime I'll give a look
at the next two other API changes.

I'm not happy with the idea of having this new command be VACUUM (FULL
CONCURRENTLY).  It's a bit of an absurd name if you ask me.  Heck, even
VACUUM (FULL) seems a bit absurd nowadays.

Maybe we should have a new toplevel command.  Some ideas that have been
thrown around:

- RETABLE (it's like REINDEX, but for tables)
- ALTER TABLE <tab> SQUEEZE
- SQUEEZE <table>
- VACUUM (SQUEEZE)
- VACUUM (COMPACT)
- MAINTAIN <tab> COMPACT
- MAINTAIN <tab> SQUEEZE

-- 
Álvaro Herrera               48°01'N 7°57'E  —  https://www.EnterpriseDB.com/