On Tue, Apr 18, 2023 at 4:30 PM Peter Geoghegan <pg@bowt.ie> wrote:
> > I'd be interested to know if you could tell me if SKIP_LOCKED has more
> > importance than INDEX_CLEANUP, for example. If you can, it would seem
> > like trying to say apples are more important than oranges, or
> > vice-versa.
>
> I don't accept your premise that the only thing that matters (or the
> most important thing) is adherence to some unambiguous and consistent
> order.
In the case of VACUUM, the current devel order is:
FULL, FREEZE, VERBOSE, ANALYZE, DISABLE_PAGE_SKIPPING, SKIP_LOCKED,
INDEX_CLEANUP, PROCESS_MAIN, PROCESS_TOAST,
TRUNCATE, PARALLEL, SKIP_DATABASE_STATS, ONLY_DATABASE_STATS, BUFFER_USAGE_LIMIT
I think that this order is far superior to alphabetical order, which
is tantamount to random order. The first 4 items are indeed the really
important ones to users, in my experience.
I do have some minor quibbles beyond that, though. These are:
* PARALLEL deserves to be at the start, maybe 4th or 5th overall.
* DISABLE_PAGE_SKIPPING should be later, since it's really only a
testing option that probably never proved useful in production. In
particular, it has little business being before SKIP_LOCKED, which is
much more important and relevant.
* TRUNCATE and INDEX_CLEANUP are similar options, and ought to be side
by side. I would put PROCESS_MAIN and PROCESS_TOAST after those two
for the same reason.
While I'm certain that nobody will agree with me on every little
detail, I have to imagine that most would find my preferred ordering
quite understandable and unsurprising, at a high level -- this is not
a hopelessly idiosyncratic ranking, that could just as easily have
been generated by a PRNG. People may not easily agree that "apples are
more important than oranges, or vice-versa", but what does it matter?
I've really only put each option into buckets of items with *roughly*
the same importance. All of the details beyond that don't matter to
me, at all.
--
Peter Geoghegan
