Re: Interrupts vs signals

On 31/10/2024 02:32, Michael Paquier wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 30, 2024 at 01:23:54PM -0400, Robert Haas wrote:
>> On Wed, Oct 30, 2024 at 12:03 PM Heikki Linnakangas <hlinnaka@iki.fi> wrote:
>>> C) We could provide "forward-compatibility" macros in a separate header
>>> file, to make the new "SetInterrupt" etc calls work in old PostgreSQL
>>> versions. Many of the extensions already have a header file like this,
>>> see e.g. citusdata/citus/src/include/pg_version_compat.h,
>>> pipelinedb/pipelinedb/include/compat.h. It might actually be a good idea
>>> to provide a semi-official header file like this on the Postgres wiki,
>>> to help extension authors. It would encourage extensions to use the
>>> latest idioms, while still being able to compile for older versions.
>>>
>>> I'm leaning towards option C). Let's rip off the band-aid, but provide
>>> documentation for how to adapt your extension code. And provide a
>>> forwards-compatibility header on the wiki, that extension authors can
>>> use to make the new Interrupt calls work against old server versions.
>>
>> I don't know which of these options is best, but I don't find any of
>> them categorically unacceptable.
> 
> Looking at the compatibility macros of 0008 for the latches with
> INTERRUPT_GENERAL_WAKEUP under latch.h, the changes are not that bad
> to adapt to, IMO.  It reminds of f25968c49697: hard breakage, no
> complaints I've heard of because I guess that most folks have been
> using an in-house compatibility headers.
> 
> A big disadvantage of B is that someone may decide to add new code in
> core that depends on the past routines, and we'd better avoid that for
> this new layer of APIs for interrupt handling.  A is a subset of C: do
> a hard switch in the core code, with C mentioning a compatibility
> layer in the wiki that does not exist in the core code.  Any of A or C
> is OK, I would not choose B for the core backend.
Having spent some time playing with this, I quite like option C: break 
compatibility, but provide an out-of-tree header file with 
*forward*-compatibility macros. That encourages extension authors to 
adapt to new idioms, but avoids having to sprinkle extension code with 
#if version checks to support old versions.

See attached pg_version_compatibility.h header. It allows compiling code 
that uses basic SendInterrupt, RaiseInterrupt, WaitInterrupt calls with 
older server versions. My plan is to put this on the Wiki, and update it 
with similar compatibility helpers for other changes we might make in 
v18 or future versions. We could add helpers for previous 
incompatibilities in v17 and v16 too, although at quick glance I'm not 
sure what those might be.

I tested this approach by adapting pg_cron to build with these patches 
and the compatibility header, and compiling it with all supported server 
versoins. Works great, see adapt-pg_cron.patch.

I pushed the preliminary cleanup patches from this patch set earlier, 
only the main patches remain. Attached is a new version of those, with 
mostly comment cleanups.

-- 
Heikki Linnakangas
Neon (https://neon.tech)