Re: Changing shared_buffers without restart - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

Hi Dmitry,

On Tue, Oct 14, 2025 at 2:05 PM Dmitry Dolgov <9erthalion6@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> As I've mentioned in our off list communication, I'm working on the new
> design and was planning to post some intermediate results in a couple of
> weeks. Thus I'm surprised that instead of aligning on plans you've
> decided to post you own version earlier. It most certainly doesn't make
> things easier for me, so what's your plan anyway? Are you trying to
> hijack the thread with your own patches? It doesn't strike me as
> particularly constructive thing to do.

I am sorry if you have felt that way. That wasn't the intention.
Please allow me to explain ...

Tomas and Andres have pointed out some serious faults in the patchset
posted at [2], including problems in my patches. There are many of
those. If we work in parallel we can make good progress. So I
continued working based on your last patchset [2], which was posted
more than 3 months ago. Knowing that you are working on a design, I
tried not to touch the synchronization and UI part and yet find
solutions to some of the open problems (my patchset in [3] is a recent
example). As I mentioned in my email at [1], every open question I
tried to solve next was blocked because of a single problem, which I
have described in my previous email - A problem in synchronization in
the patchset at [2].

Instead of just doing nothing, I thought I would try to implement the
UI and synchronization that I had in mind. Once I implemented it and
saw that it could address a few serious concerns raised by Andres, I
thought I would share it with hackers to get some early feedback.
Early feedback from people like Andres and Tomas is important to avoid
going down the wrong path (and wasting time). Is there something wrong
with that? BTW, this idea isn't new and it's certainly not only mine.
It's a combination of an implementation shared by Thomas Munro [4] and
an implementation I had shared with you offlist on 30th January 2025.
I never saw any comments from you on the specific changes in those
implementations and neither anything from those patchsets was absorbed
in your patchsets.

If I would have posted my alternate solution in January itself, that
might have been considered hijacking (that's a serious accusation,
btw). But instead I worked with your patches, improving them as long
as I could. Even the patchset I shared is still
on top of your patchset in [2].

I don't know your solution. But if it's similar to my proposal, we are
in agreement and can work further in parallel on subproblems. If it's
different, let's discuss pros and cons of both - maybe there is some
value in letting those evolve parallely and let the community choose
the best, or choose best of both solutions giving rise to a new
solution. My patchset might give you solutions/code for the problems
you are trying to solve. It has tests which you can adapt to your
solution. Many exciting possibilities lie ahead with multiple working
solutions. Knowing nothing about the solution you are attempting, it's
hard to know which of these apply and help you.

[1] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/CAExHW5sOu8%2B9h6t7jsA5jVcQ--N-LCtjkPnCw%2BrpoN0ovT6PHg%40mail.gmail.com
[2] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/my4hukmejato53ef465ev7lk3sqiqvneh7436rz64wmtc7rbfj%40hmuxsf2ngov2
[3] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/CAExHW5vB8sAmDtkEN5dcYYeBok3D8eAzMFCOH1k%2Bkrxht1yFjA%40mail.gmail.com
[4] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/CA%2BhUKGL5hW3i_pk5y_gcbF_C5kP-pWFjCuM8bAyCeHo3xUaH8g%40mail.gmail.com

--
Best Wishes,
Ashutosh Bapat