Re: DOCS - pg_replication_slot . Fix the 'inactive_since' description

David G. Johnston <david.g.johnston@gmail.com>

From: "David G. Johnston" <david.g.johnston@gmail.com>
To: Kyotaro Horiguchi <horikyota.ntt@gmail.com>
Cc: "amit.kapila16@gmail.com" <amit.kapila16@gmail.com>, "shveta.malik@gmail.com" <shveta.malik@gmail.com>, "smithpb2250@gmail.com" <smithpb2250@gmail.com>, "pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org" <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>
Date: 2024-09-04T06:04:28Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers
On Tuesday, September 3, 2024, Kyotaro Horiguchi <horikyota.ntt@gmail.com>
wrote:

> At Tue, 3 Sep 2024 10:43:14 +0530, Amit Kapila <amit.kapila16@gmail.com>
> wrote in
> > On Mon, Sep 2, 2024 at 9:14 AM shveta malik <shveta.malik@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > >
> > > On Mon, Sep 2, 2024 at 5:47 AM Peter Smith <smithpb2250@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > > > ----
> > > >
> > > > To summarize, the current description wrongly describes the field as
> a
> > > > time duration:
> > > > "The time since the slot has become inactive."
> > > >
> > > > I suggest replacing it with:
> > > > "The slot has been inactive since this time."
> > > >
> > >
> > > +1 for the change. If I had read the document without knowing about
> > > the patch, I too would have interpreted it as a duration.
> > >
> >
> > The suggested change looks good to me as well. I'll wait for a day or
> > two before pushing to see if anyone thinks otherwise.
>
> If possible, I'd prefer to use "the time" as the subject. For example,
> would "The time this slot was inactivated" be acceptable? However,
> this loses the sense of continuation up to that point, so if that's
> crucial, the current proposal might be better.
>

Agree on sticking with “The time…”

Thus I suggest either:

The time when the slot became inactive.
The time when the slot was deactivated.

Apparently inactivate is a valid choice here but it definitely sounds like
unusual usage in this context.  Existing usage (via GibHub search…someone
may want to grep) seems to support deactivate as well.

I like the first suggestion more, especially since becoming inactive can
happen without user input.  Saying deactivate could be seen to imply user
intervention.

David J.

Commits

  1. Doc: Clarify the `inactive_since` field description.

  2. Change last_inactive_time to inactive_since in pg_replication_slots.