Re: trying again to get incremental backup

Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>

From: Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>
To: David Steele <david@pgmasters.net>
Cc: Dilip Kumar <dilipbalaut@gmail.com>, Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>, "pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org" <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Date: 2023-10-19T20:00:13Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers
On Thu, Oct 19, 2023 at 3:18 PM David Steele <david@pgmasters.net> wrote:
> 0001 looks pretty good to me. The only thing I find a little troublesome
> is the repeated construction of file names with/without segment numbers
> in ResetUnloggedRelationsInDbspaceDir(), .e.g.:
>
> +                       if (segno == 0)
> +                               snprintf(dstpath, sizeof(dstpath), "%s/%u",
> +                                                dbspacedirname, relNumber);
> +                       else
> +                               snprintf(dstpath, sizeof(dstpath), "%s/%u.%u",
> +                                                dbspacedirname, relNumber, segno);
>
>
> If this happened three times I'd definitely want a helper function, but
> even with two I think it would be a bit nicer.

Personally I think that would make the code harder to read rather than
easier. I agree that repeating code isn't great, but this is a
relatively brief idiom and pretty self-explanatory. If other people
agree with you I can change it, but to me it's not an improvement.

> 0002 is definitely a good idea. FWIW pgBackRest does this conversion but
> also errors if it does not succeed. We have never seen a report of this
> error happening in the wild, so I think it must be pretty rare if it
> does happen.

Cool, but ... how about the main patch set? It's nice to get some of
these refactoring bits and pieces out of the way, but if I spend the
effort to work out what I think are the right answers to the remaining
design questions for the main patch set and then find out after I've
done all that that you have massive objections, I'm going to be
annoyed. I've been trying to get this feature into PostgreSQL for
years, and if I don't succeed this time, I want the reason to be
something better than "well, I didn't find out that David disliked X
until five minutes before I was planning to type 'git push'."

I'm not really concerned about detailed bug-hunting in the main
patches just yet. The time for that will come. But if you have views
on how to resolve the design questions that I mentioned in a couple of
emails back, or intend to advocate vigorously against the whole
concept for some reason, let's try to sort that out sooner rather than
later.

-- 
Robert Haas
EDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com



Commits

  1. Minor fixes to pg_combinebackup and its documentation.

  2. Fix defects in PrepareForIncrementalBackup.

  3. Add WALSummarizerLock to wait_event_names.txt

  4. Initialize variable to placate compiler.

  5. Replace nonsense comment with a relevant one.

  6. Fix numerous typos in incremental backup commits.

  7. Add support for incremental backup.

  8. Add a new WAL summarizer process.

  9. Move src/bin/pg_verifybackup/parse_manifest.c into src/common.

  10. Fix brown paper bag bug in 5c47c6546c413d5eb51c1626070a807026e6139d.

  11. Rename pg_verifybackup's JsonManifestParseContext callback functions.

  12. Rename JsonManifestParseContext callbacks.

  13. Change how a base backup decides which files have checksums.

  14. Change struct tablespaceinfo's oid member from 'char *' to 'Oid'

  15. Refactor parse_filename_for_nontemp_relation to parse more.

  16. During online checkpoints, insert XLOG_CHECKPOINT_REDO at redo point.

  17. In basebackup.c, refactor to create read_file_data_into_buffer.

  18. In basebackup.c, refactor to create verify_page_checksum.

  19. Report syncscan position at end of scan.

  20. Exclude additional directories in pg_basebackup

  21. Add new JSON processing functions and parser API.