Re: Recovery Test Framework

On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 12:07 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> Simon Riggs <simon@2ndQuadrant.com> writes:
>> Recovery doesn't have a test framework as yet. I would like to add one
>> for this release, especially since we have so much recovery-related code
>> being added to the release (and manual testing is so time consuming).
>
> I've been thinking for some time that putting replication into 8.4
> has proven to be an unreasonably optimistic goal.  Seeing new
> requirements like this one pop up two months after feature freeze
> kind of drives the point home.

I don't have a strong feeling as to which of the replication-related
patches are ready to commit, but I don't think that the fact that
Simon has an idea for improving the test framework is a reason for
rejecting them.  Referring to an idea for a new test framework for
recovery as "a new requirement for replication" is quite a stretch.

It might also be pointed out that the "Infrastructure Changes for
Recovery" patch was originally submitted for the September CommitFest,
but since review stopped for about 6 weeks beginning just after the
first of October, picked up briefly again on November 17th with a few
messages from Heikki, and then died again until late December, it's
perhaps not surprising that not a lot of progress has been made....
particularly since no reviewers were assigned for a ridiculously long
time.  "Infrastructure Changes for Recovery" was moved from the
September Commitfest with your name and Heikki's name already on it,
and no one else was ever assigned (nor did you provide any more
review, at least as far as I can remember seeing on -hackers).

"Hot Standby" finally had a reviewer assigned on November 26th, when
Pavan Daolesee was added - but I'm not even sure that was an official
RRR assignment, I think he may have just picked it up.  At any rate,
when a reviewer isn't assigned for almost four weeks, and it's at that
point the day before Thanksgiving, well, don't expect a lot to get
done before Christmas.  SE-Postgresql was even more egregious - it
certainly never had a round robin reviewer and was listed as being
reviewed by "Nobody" for over a month.

All of this is particularly mysterious to me in light of the fact that
it was you yourself who suggested that we should make sure to get
feedback out to the authors of major patches early.

http://archives.postgresql.org/message-id/3555.1225336370@sss.pgh.pa.us

I personally reviewed at least 10 patches for this CommitFest.  I
thought the point of that was to take some of the load off of the
committers so that they could focus on major new features like
replication.  Otherwise, what is the point of having round robin
reviewers?  And what is the point of saying that we want replication?

...Robert