Thread: Time to fully remove heap_formtuple() and friends?
Commit 902d1cb3, made in 2008, established that the functions heap_formtuple(), heap_modifytuple(), and heap_deformtuple() were deprecated. The commit also actually removed those routines, replacing them with simple wrappers around their real replacements, which are spelled slightly differently and have a slightly different interface (their real replacements are heap_deform_tuple() and friends). The wrappers fulfilled the old, legacy interface, and were added for compatibility with third party code -- the old char 'n'/' ' convention for indicating nulls was bolted on top of calls to the new variants. Bolting that on to the new variants involves a new palloc() + pfree(), which isn't cheap. Attached patch actually removes heap_formtuple() and friends. Does this seem worthwhile? Does this seem like something that there should be a compatibility release note item for if we proceed? I have not added one yet. I think that enough time has passed that these wrappers are clearly 100% deadwood. If any external extensions are still using heap_formtuple(), they ought to be updated to work with Postgres 9.5 by using the new variants -- a straight switch-over of callers in the style of 902d1cb3 should now work against all supported versions of PostgreSQL, and without macro hacks. Affected external code building against the removed legacy interface will reliably fail to build, forcing the third party code to conform in a non-surprising way. Removing the code seems very low risk. -- Peter Geoghegan
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Peter Geoghegan <pg@heroku.com> writes:
> Attached patch actually removes heap_formtuple() and friends. Does
> this seem worthwhile?
Seems reasonable, but at this point I would say this is 9.6 material;
third-party-module authors have enough to do with the API breaks we've
already created for 9.5. Please enter this in commitfest-next.
regards, tom lane
On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 8:47 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote: > Peter Geoghegan <pg@heroku.com> writes: >> Attached patch actually removes heap_formtuple() and friends. Does >> this seem worthwhile? > > Seems reasonable, but at this point I would say this is 9.6 material; > third-party-module authors have enough to do with the API breaks we've > already created for 9.5. Please enter this in commitfest-next. Fair enough. I have done so. -- Peter Geoghegan
On 06/13/2015 07:10 AM, Peter Geoghegan wrote: > On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 8:47 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote: >> Peter Geoghegan <pg@heroku.com> writes: >>> Attached patch actually removes heap_formtuple() and friends. Does >>> this seem worthwhile? >> >> Seems reasonable, but at this point I would say this is 9.6 material; >> third-party-module authors have enough to do with the API breaks we've >> already created for 9.5. Please enter this in commitfest-next. > > Fair enough. I have done so. Ok, committed. - Heikki
On Thu, Jul 2, 2015 at 11:22 AM, Heikki Linnakangas <hlinnaka@iki.fi> wrote: > Ok, committed. Thanks. -- Peter Geoghegan