Nathan has already had to spend a significant amount of time engaging
with this thread over what I think should be a complete non-event, and will probably have to spend more, and all that takes away from time that could, for example, be spent reviewing and committing other patches. And for what?
A broader awareness of what is going on in this little corner of an expansive codebase. And making explicit those little unwritten rules happened upon by accident so many years ago, and their consequences.
I don't see where anyone has done something wrong or bad. This touched new territory in a patch that otherwise few people likely cared about - the vacuum_truncate feature itself being already developed - a post-commit realization and discussion was the most likely outcome. Nikolay's desire for an API-only thread/patch in which to have this discussion does match with ideal circumstances but is not a practical reality. I wouldn't be too hard on him for expressing that desire - I'm sure we've all wished to not be surprised in this way.
A more concrete explanation of the effect of this patch on other work would be nice to have; and maybe we keep the patch in until we all get a better feel of the negative side-effects that are presently just being alluded to. This can all easily wait until May.
