Re: REPACK and naming

On Thu, Sep 18, 2025 at 3:55 PM Álvaro Herrera <alvherre@alvh.no-ip.org>
wrote:

> On 2025-Sep-17, David G. Johnston wrote:
>
> > On Wednesday, September 17, 2025, David Rowley <dgrowleyml@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > > On Thu, 18 Sept 2025 at 01:09, Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > > > RETABLE just isn't a word. The code sometimes calls this a REWRITE of
> > > > a table, which would be reasonable.
> > >
> > > +1. I was reading this yesterday wondering why "REWRITE" didn't get a
> > > mention.
> >
>
> I'm not particularly excited about REWRITE, as it sounds a little bit
> too generic, plus we already have the "query rewriter" which rewrites,
> and I think it would be good that we stop overloading terms for
> completely different things.
>

Agreed


> > Rebuild has some prior art apparently, which makes it appealing.
>
> Can you cite that?  I've seen "ALTER TABLE/INDEX REBUILD", but not
> REBUILD as a standalone command.
>
>
I was just skimming the list Mikhail provided.

https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/CADzfLwXjBvqQCuPOaMGe20a+ySTcqSpfvoGyZZmrMkJ=HbtcOw@mail.gmail.com

It isn't standalone but the keyword REBUILD gets used versus our unlisted
use of REPACK.

But there isn't enough consistency/similarity for me to want to avoid
repack altogether.

David J.