Re: Windows buildfarm members vs. new async-notify isolation test

On Tue, Dec 10, 2019 at 9:27 PM Tom Lane  wrote:
>
> Amit Kapila  writes:
> > On Sun, Dec 8, 2019 at 10:27 PM Tom Lane  wrote:
> >> Doing it like this seems attractive to me because it gets rid of two
> >> different failure modes: inability to create a new thread and inability
> >> to create a new pipe handle.  Now on the other hand, it means that
> >> inability to complete the read/write transaction with a client right
> >> away will delay processing of other signals.  But we know that the
> >> client is engaged in a CallNamedPipe operation, so how realistic is
> >> that concern?
>
> > Right, the client is engaged in a CallNamedPipe operation, but the
> > current mechanism can allow multiple such clients and that might lead
> > to faster processing of signals.
>
> It would only matter if multiple processes signal the same backend at the
> same time, which seems to me to be probably a very minority use-case.
> For the normal case of one signal arriving at a time, what I'm suggesting
> ought to be noticeably faster because of fewer kernel calls.  Surely
> creating a new pipe instance and a new thread are not free.
>
> In any case, the main thing I'm on about here is getting rid of the
> failure modes.  The existing code does have a rather lame/buggy
> workaround for the cant-create-new-pipe case.  A possible answer for
> cant-create-new-thread might be to go ahead and service the current
> request locally in the long-lived signal thread.  But that seems like
> it's piling useless (and hard to test) complexity on top of useless
> complexity.
>

I am convinced by your points.  So +1 for your proposed patch.  I have
already reviewed it yesterday and it appears fine to me.

-- 
With Regards,
Amit Kapila.
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com