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Re: Documenting coding style

Peter Eisentraut <peter@eisentraut.org>

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From: Peter Eisentraut <peter@eisentraut.org>
To: Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com>, Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>
Cc: PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>
Date: 2026-04-15T18:10:59Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers 
On 10.04.26 16:49, Nathan Bossart wrote:
>> I wonder if we should move the coding style section out of sgml into a
>> top-level CODING_STYLE.md or something like that.
>>
>> And then obviously add things like Size being deprecated.
> Unless we're going to actually remove the typedef in the near future, I'm
> not sure I'd support even marking it deprecated.  If we're going to keep it
> around indefinitely, that's just going to become another source of nitpicks
> when new contributors inevitably copy/paste some code from the aughts.  A
> style page makes the situation a little better, but it's yet another thing
> that folks have to remember.

In this case, if one wanted to do something, one should at least enhance 
the code comment for Size, which is currently very bare and doesn't 
explain why the type exists.

As some counterexamples, some of which I wrote:

/*
  * Pointer
  *      Variable holding address of any memory resident object.
  *      (obsolescent; use void * or char *)
  */
typedef void *Pointer;

/* Historical names for types in <stdint.h>. */
typedef int8_t int8;
...

  * We require C11 and C++11, so static_assert() is expected to be there.
  * StaticAssertDecl() was previously used for portability, but it's now 
just a
  * plain wrapper and doesn't need to be used in new code.

Commits

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

  1. Use size_t instead of Size in pg_waldump

  2. More tar portability adjustments.

  3. Further harden tests that might use not-so-compatible tar versions.

  4. Harden astreamer tar parsing logic against archives it can't handle.

  5. Fix pg_waldump/t/001_basic.pl with BSD tar on ZFS.

  6. Remove a low-value, high-risk optimization in pg_waldump.

  7. Fix misuse of simplehash.h hash operations in pg_waldump.

  8. Fix file descriptor leakages in pg_waldump.

  9. Fix poorly-sized buffers in astreamer compression modules.

  10. Remove read_archive_file()'s "count" parameter.

  11. Report detailed errors from XLogFindNextRecord() failures.

  12. Fix assorted bugs in archive_waldump.c.

  13. Remove nonfunctional tar file trailer size check.

  14. Fix finalization of decompressor astreamers.

  15. Move tar detection and compression logic to common.

  16. pg_verifybackup: Enable WAL parsing for tar-format backups

  17. pg_waldump: Add support for reading WAL from tar archives

  18. pg_waldump: Preparatory refactoring for tar archive WAL decoding.

  19. pg_waldump: Remove file-level global WalSegSz.

  20. pg_verifybackup: Verify tar-format backups.