2c03216d83
Each WAL record now carries information about the modified relation and block(s) in a standardized format. That makes it easier to write tools that need that information, like pg_rewind, prefetching the blocks to speed up recovery, etc. There's a whole new API for building WAL records, replacing the XLogRecData chains used previously. The new API consists of XLogRegister* functions, which are called for each buffer and chunk of data that is added to the record. The new API also gives more control over when a full-page image is written, by passing flags to the XLogRegisterBuffer function. This also simplifies the XLogReadBufferForRedo() calls. The function can dig the relation and block number from the WAL record, so they no longer need to be passed as arguments. For the convenience of redo routines, XLogReader now disects each WAL record after reading it, copying the main data part and the per-block data into MAXALIGNed buffers. The data chunks are not aligned within the WAL record, but the redo routines can assume that the pointers returned by XLogRecGet* functions are. Redo routines are now passed the XLogReaderState, which contains the record in the already-disected format, instead of the plain XLogRecord. The new record format also makes the fixed size XLogRecord header smaller, by removing the xl_len field. The length of the "main data" portion is now stored at the end of the WAL record, and there's a separate header after XLogRecord for it. The alignment padding at the end of XLogRecord is also removed. This compansates for the fact that the new format would otherwise be more bulky than the old format. Reviewed by Andres Freund, Amit Kapila, Michael Paquier, Alvaro Herrera, Fujii Masao.
The PostgreSQL contrib tree
---------------------------
This subtree contains porting tools, analysis utilities, and plug-in
features that are not part of the core PostgreSQL system, mainly
because they address a limited audience or are too experimental to be
part of the main source tree. This does not preclude their
usefulness.
User documentation for each module appears in the main SGML
documentation.
When building from the source distribution, these modules are not
built automatically, unless you build the "world" target. You can
also build and install them all by running "make all" and "make
install" in this directory; or to build and install just one selected
module, do the same in that module's subdirectory.
Some directories supply new user-defined functions, operators, or
types. To make use of one of these modules, after you have installed
the code you need to register the new SQL objects in the database
system by executing a CREATE EXTENSION command. In a fresh database,
you can simply do
CREATE EXTENSION module_name;
See the PostgreSQL documentation for more information about this
procedure.