On 8/23/24 2:29 PM, Robert Haas wrote:
On Fri, Aug 23, 2024 at 2:20 PM Jonathan S. Katz <jk...@postgresql.org> wrote:I don't think extension maintainers necessarily have the same level of PostgreSQL internals as you or many of the other people who frequent -hackers, so I think it's fair for them to ask questions or raise issues with patches they don't understand. I was able to glean from the commit message that this was the commit that likely changed the behavior in pgvector, but I can't immediately glean looking through the code as to why. (And using your logic, should an extension maintainer understand the optimizer code when PostgreSQL is providing an interface to the extension maintainer to encapsulate its interactions)?You can always push back and say "Well, maybe try this, or try that" - which would be a mentoring approach that could push it back on the extension maintainer, which is valid, but I don't see why an extension maintainer can't raise an issue or ask a question here.I'm certainly not saying that extension maintainers can't raise issues or ask questions here. I just feel that the problem could have been analyzed a bit more before posting.
This assumes that the person posting the problem has the requisite expertise to determine what the issue is. Frankly, I was happy I was able to at least trace the issue down to the particular commit and brought what appeared to be a reliable reproducer, in absence of knowing if 1/ this was actually an issue with PG or pgvector, 2/ does it actually require a fix, or 3/ what the problem could actually be, given a lack of understanding of the full inner working of the optimizer.
Based on the above, I'm not sure what bar this needed to clear to begin a discussion on the mailing list (which further downthread, seems to be raising some interesting points).
Jonathan
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