Triage on old commitfest entries - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

As I threatened in another thread, I've looked through all of the
oldest commitfest entries to see which ones should maybe be tossed,
on the grounds that they're unlikely to ever get committed so we
should stop pushing them forward to the next CF.

An important note to make here is that we don't have any explicit
mechanism for saying "sorry, this patch is perhaps useful but it
seems that nobody is going to take an interest in it".  Closing
such a patch as "rejected" seems harsh, but R-W-F isn't very
appropriate either if the patch never got any real review.
Perhaps we should create a new closure state?

I looked at entries that are at least 10 CFs old, as indicated by
the handy sort field.  That's a pretty small population: 16 items
out of the 317 listed in the 2021-09 CF.  A quick look in recent
CFs shows that it's very rare that we commit entries older than
10 CFs.

Here's what I found, along with some commentary about each one.

Patch        Age in CFs

Protect syscache from bloating with negative cache entries    23
    Last substantive discussion 2021-01, currently passing cfbot

    It's well known that I've never liked this patch, so I can't
    claim to be unbiased.  But what I see here is a lot of focus
    on specific test scenarios with little concern for the
    possibility that other scenarios will be made worse.
    I think we need some new ideas to make progress.
    Proposed action: RWF

Transactions involving multiple postgres foreign servers    18
    Last substantive discussion 2021-07, currently failing cfbot

    This has been worked on fairly recently, but frankly I'm
    dubious that we want to integrate a 2PC XM into Postgres.
    Proposed action: Reject

schema variables, LET command    18
    Last substantive discussion 2021-09, currently passing cfbot

    Seems to be actively worked on, but is it ever going to get
    committed?

Remove self join on a unique column    16
    Last substantive discussion 2021-07, currently passing cfbot

    I'm not exactly sold that this has a good planning-cost-to-
    usefulness ratio.
    Proposed action: RWF

Index Skip Scan    16
    Last substantive discussion 2021-05, currently passing cfbot

    Seems possibly useful, but we're not making progress.

standby recovery fails when re-replaying due to missing directory which was removed in previous replay    13
    Last substantive discussion 2021-09, currently passing cfbot

    This is a bug fix, so we shouldn't drop it.

Remove page-read callback from XLogReaderState    12
    Last substantive discussion 2021-04, currently failing cfbot

    Not sure what to think about this one, but given that it
    was pushed and later reverted, I'm suspicious of it.

Incremental Materialized View Maintenance    12
    Last substantive discussion 2021-09, currently passing cfbot

    Seems to be actively worked on.

pg_upgrade fails with non-standard ACL    12
    Last substantive discussion 2021-03, currently passing cfbot

    This is a bug fix, so we shouldn't drop it.

Fix up partitionwise join on how equi-join conditions between the partition keys are identified    11
    Last substantive discussion 2021-07, currently passing cfbot

    This is another one where I feel we need new ideas to make
    progress.
    Proposed action: RWF

A hook for path-removal decision on add_path    11
    Last substantive discussion 2021-03, currently passing cfbot

    I don't think this is a great idea: a hook there will be
    costly, and it's very unclear how multiple extensions could
    interact correctly.
    Proposed action: Reject

Implement INSERT SET syntax    11
    Last substantive discussion 2020-03, currently passing cfbot

    This one is clearly stalled.  I don't think it's necessarily
    a bad idea, but we seem not to be very interested.
    Proposed action: Reject for lack of interest

SQL:2011 application time    11
    Last substantive discussion 2021-10, currently failing cfbot

    Actively worked on, and it's a big feature so long gestation
    isn't surprising.

WITH SYSTEM VERSIONING Temporal Tables    11
    Last substantive discussion 2021-09, currently failing cfbot

    Actively worked on, and it's a big feature so long gestation
    isn't surprising.

psql - add SHOW_ALL_RESULTS option    11
    Last substantive discussion 2021-09, currently passing cfbot

    This got committed and reverted once already.  I have to be
    suspicious of whether this is a good design.

Split StdRdOptions into HeapOptions and ToastOptions    10
    Last substantive discussion 2021-06, currently failing cfbot

    I think the author has despaired of anyone else taking an
    interest here.  Unless somebody intends to take an interest,
    we should put this one out of its misery.
    Proposed action: Reject for lack of interest


Thoughts?

            regards, tom lane