As near as I can tell, there are four whole modules of dead code in
src/backend/libpq/: be-dumpdata.c, be-pqexec.c, portal.c, portalbuf.c
(plus some support code in tcop/dest.c). These provide functions called
PQexec and PQfn, which apparently were once backend-side equivalents
to the frontend-libpq functions of the same names, as well as a whole
bunch of other code that may once have been shared with frontend-libpq,
but is so no longer.
The only externally referenced entry point to these modules is an
undocumented SQL function "pqtest", which I strongly suspect no one
is using.
I am strongly inclined to rip all this stuff out, because it's buggy.
I've already found memory-leak problems and dangling-global-pointer
problems, and there are probably more. I'd say this code has been
suffering from software rot for a long time.
Does anyone remember what this code was for, or know a reason to keep it
(and fix it) instead of ripping it out?
regards, tom lane
