Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> writes:
> Maybe it would help for Jeff to use elog_node_display() to the nodes
> that are causing the problem - e.g. outerpathkeys and innerpathkeys
> and best_path->path_mergeclauses, or just best_path - at the point
> where the error is thrown. That might give us enough information to
> see what's broken.
I'll be astonished if that's sufficient evidence. We already know that
the problem is that the input path doesn't claim to be sorted in a way
that would match the merge clauses, but that doesn't tell us how such
a path came to be generated (or, if it wasn't intentionally done, where
the data structure got clobbered later).
It's possible that setting a breakpoint at create_mergejoin_path and
capturing stack traces for all calls would yield usable insight. But
there are likely to be lots of calls if this is an 8-way join query,
and probably only a few are wrong.
I'd much rather have a test case than try to debug this remotely.
Bandwidth too low.
regards, tom lane