Re: get rid of Pointer type, mostly

Jelte Fennema-Nio <postgres@jeltef.nl>

From: Jelte Fennema-Nio <postgres@jeltef.nl>

To: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>

Cc: Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>, Peter Eisentraut <peter@eisentraut.org>, pgsql-hackers <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>

Date: 2025-11-24T17:30:04Z

Lists: pgsql-hackers

Commits

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

Remove no longer needed casts from Pointer
- e158fd4d68f4 19 (unreleased) landed
Remove no longer needed casts to Pointer
- c6be3daa054a 19 (unreleased) landed
Change Pointer to void *
- 1b2bb5077e9e 19 (unreleased) landed
Don't rely on pointer arithmetic with Pointer type
- 756a43689324 19 (unreleased) landed
Use more appropriate DatumGet* function
- 8c6bbd674ed8 19 (unreleased) landed
Remove useless casts to Pointer
- 623801b3bdb4 19 (unreleased) landed

On Mon, Nov 24, 2025, 09:34 Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:

> Especially so if the removal is incomplete.  What have
> you really accomplished then?
>

In this case, what we would accomplish is that no new developer to the
project has to understand what some unclear typedef means, *unless* they
touch GIN related code. Just from its name it's definitely not clear to me
that Pointer means char * instead of void *. And this typedef is ven
shorter than the thing it represents.

Side annoyance: I think this is a falacy that hackers discussions end up in
a lot. Someone suggesting that the partial improvements have (almost) no
benefit and all cases need to be fixed in one go to before it should be
committed. Then the patch author thinks that's too much work and then
nothing ends up being improved at all.