Remove dubious micro-optimization in ckpt_buforder_comparator().

tglsfdc · tglsfdc · commit c24a908d0480 · 2018-01-10T15:50:54.000-05:00
It seems incorrect to assume that the list of CkptSortItems can never contain duplicate page numbers: concurrent activity could result in some page getting dropped from a low-numbered buffer and later loaded into a high-numbered buffer while BufferSync is scanning the buffer pool. If that happened, the comparator would give self-inconsistent results, potentially confusing qsort(). Saving one comparison step is not worth possibly getting the sort wrong. So far as I can tell, nothing would actually go wrong given our current implementation of qsort(). It might get a bit slower than expected if there were a large number of duplicates of one value, but that's surely a probability-epsilon case. Still, the comment is wrong, and if we ever switched to another sort implementation it might be less forgiving. In passing, avoid casting away const-ness of the argument pointers; I've not seen any compiler complaints from that, but it seems likely that some compilers would not like it. Back-patch to 9.6 where this code came in, just in case I've underestimated the possible consequences. Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/18437.1515607610@sss.pgh.pa.us
diff --git a/src/backend/storage/buffer/bufmgr.c b/src/backend/storage/buffer/bufmgr.c
@@ -4020,8 +4020,8 @@ local_buffer_write_error_callback(void *arg)
 static int
 rnode_comparator(const void *p1, const void *p2)
 {
-	RelFileNode n1 = *(RelFileNode *) p1;
-	RelFileNode n2 = *(RelFileNode *) p2;
+	RelFileNode n1 = *(const RelFileNode *) p1;
+	RelFileNode n2 = *(const RelFileNode *) p2;
 
 	if (n1.relNode < n2.relNode)
 		return -1;
@@ -4130,8 +4130,8 @@ buffertag_comparator(const void *a, const void *b)
 static int
 ckpt_buforder_comparator(const void *pa, const void *pb)
 {
-	const CkptSortItem *a = (CkptSortItem *) pa;
-	const CkptSortItem *b = (CkptSortItem *) pb;
+	const CkptSortItem *a = (const CkptSortItem *) pa;
+	const CkptSortItem *b = (const CkptSortItem *) pb;
 
 	/* compare tablespace */
 	if (a->tsId < b->tsId)
@@ -4151,8 +4151,10 @@ ckpt_buforder_comparator(const void *pa, const void *pb)
 	/* compare block number */
 	else if (a->blockNum < b->blockNum)
 		return -1;
-	else	/* should not be the same block ... */
+	else if (a->blockNum > b->blockNum)
 		return 1;
+	/* equal page IDs are unlikely, but not impossible */
+	return 0;
 }
 
 /*
