Jeff Davis <pgsql@j-davis.com> writes:
> That would be a separate thread, but it's good to know that there is a
> general consensus that we don't want to use in-place updates for non-
> critical things like stats (and perhaps eliminate them entirely). In
> other words, the inconcistency likely won't last forever.
I'm quite sure that the original argument for using in-place updates
for this was not wanting a full-database VACUUM or ANALYZE to update
every tuple in pg_class. At the time that definitely did lead to
more-or-less 2x bloat. The new information we have now is that that's
no longer the case, and thus the decision can and should be revisited.
regards, tom lane