Horton
Menu

Re: Adding REPACK [concurrently]

Amit Kapila <amit.kapila16@gmail.com>

View thread
From: Amit Kapila <amit.kapila16@gmail.com>
To: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>
Cc: Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@alvh.no-ip.org>, Mihail Nikalayeu <mihailnikalayeu@gmail.com>, Antonin Houska <ah@cybertec.at>, Srinath Reddy Sadipiralla <srinath2133@gmail.com>, Matthias van de Meent <boekewurm+postgres@gmail.com>, Pg Hackers <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>, Robert Treat <rob@xzilla.net>
Date: 2026-04-08T08:35:49Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers 
On Wed, Apr 8, 2026 at 1:54 AM Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> On 2026-04-07 00:22:32 +0200, Alvaro Herrera wrote:
> > From 4303eea0a72408183f9f5afcf8d2801df20f8ffe Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
> > From: Antonin Houska <ah@cybertec.at>
> > Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2026 17:35:47 +0200
> > Subject: [PATCH v56 3/3] Error out any process that would block at REPACK
> >
> > Any process waiting on REPACK to release its lock would actually cause
> > it to deadlock when it tries to upgrade its lock to AEL, losing all work
> > done to that point.  We avoid this by teaching the deadlock detector to
> > raise an error when this condition is detected.
>
> I'm rather doubtful that that is ok.
>

Another possible idea is that after copying table_data to the new
table, we mark the old table as in_use_by_repack and release the
ShareUpdateExclusiveLock on the old table. Then the function
CheckTableNotInUse() should be updated to give an ERROR if the table
is marked as in_use_by_repack. Now, acquiring AEL by repack
(concurrently) should be safe because all concurrent DDLs should be
errored out due to flag in_use_by_repack. Can this address the problem
we are worried about the lock upgrade?

-- 
With Regards,
Amit Kapila.

Commits

Same data as JSON: GET /api/v1/messages/:b64id/commits the thread's linked commits as JSON, with link sources. API reference →

  1. Allow old WAL recycling during REPACK CONCURRENTLY

  2. Advance restart_lsn more eagerly in LogicalConfirmReceivedLocation

  3. Remove unnecessary signal handler change

  4. Improve REPACK (CONCURRENTLY) error messages some more

  5. Revert "Allow logical replication snapshots to be database-specific"

  6. Move REPACK (CONCURRENTLY) test out of stock regression tests

  7. REPACK: do not require REPLICATION or LOGIN

  8. Add missing initialization

  9. Simplify declaration of memcpy target

  10. Reserve replication slots specifically for REPACK

  11. doc: Add an example of REPACK (CONCURRENTLY)

  12. Allow logical replication snapshots to be database-specific

  13. Avoid different-size pointer-to-integer cast

  14. Fix valgrind failure

  15. Add CONCURRENTLY option to REPACK

  16. Rename cluster.c to repack.c (and corresponding .h)

  17. Allow index_create to suppress index_build progress reporting

  18. Make index_concurrently_create_copy more general

  19. Document the 'command' column of pg_stat_progress_repack

  20. Introduce the REPACK command

  21. Toggle logical decoding dynamically based on logical slot presence.

  22. Split vacuumdb to create vacuuming.c/h

  23. Remove ReorderBufferTupleBuf structure.

  24. Revert changes to CONCURRENTLY that "sped up" Xmin advance

  25. VACUUM: ignore indexing operations with CONCURRENTLY