Thread: Re: [BUGS] BUG #4689: Expanding the length of a VARCHAR column should not induce a table rewrite

On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 11:06 AM, Heikki Linnakangas
<heikki.linnakangas@enterprisedb.com> wrote:
> While this isn't a bug, it's a reasonable feature request. I've added this
> to the TODO page: http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Todo#ALTER
>
> Patches are welcome.

I remember someone proposed a patch for that a long time ago:
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-patches/2006-10/msg00154.php

AFAICS there were 2 possible follow-ups to this patch:
- only manage the case of char/varchar (which is the most common case anyway);
- develop a complete infrastructure to handle all the cases as
suggested by Gregory.

-- 
Guillaume