Re: eliminate xl_heap_visible to reduce WAL (and eventually set VM on-access) - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

On Sat, Apr 18, 2026 at 12:33 PM Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de> wrote:
>
> I guess I could see an argument for doing something more complicated for temp
> buffers than num_temp_buffers / 4, e.g.
>   Min(1, (num_temp_buffers - NLocalPinnedBuffers) / 4)
> so that we get more conservative the more scans are concurrently in progress.
>
> But I'd not go there right now, that seems like a more complicated project
> (and we'd presumably want to do something roughly similar for the s_b case).

With shared buffers, while it is true you'd ideally leave the backend
headroom for other read streams etc, it won't error out the way the
temp table case does unless we've actually pinned all shared buffers.
It will simply slow down the read ahead of the competing read streams.

Attached is what I'm thinking of committing.

- Melanie