Re: split TOAST support out of postgres.h

On Thu, 29 Dec 2022 at 18:16, Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> On 2022-12-28 09:07:12 -0500, Isaac Morland wrote:
> > This is a bit of a bikeshed suggestion, but I'm wondering if you considered
> > calling it toast.h? Only because the word is so distinctive within
> > Postgres; everybody knows exactly to what it refers.
>
> We have a bunch of toast*.h files already. The new header should pretty much
> only contain the types, given how widely the header is going to be
> included. So maybe toast_type.h?

My 2 cents: I don't think that toast_anything.h is appropriate,
because even though the varatt infrastructure does enable
externally-stored oversized attributes (which is the essence of
TOAST), this is not the only (or primary) use of the type.

Example: Indexes do not (can not?) support toasted values, but
generally do support variable length attributes that would be pulled
in with varatt.h. I don't see why we'd call the headers of
variable-length attributes after one small - but not insignifcant -
use case.

Kind regards,

Matthias van de Meent