This tells a pretty scary story: https://coverage.postgresql.org/src/backend/access/gist/index.html
In particular, gistbuildbuffers.c is not entered *at all*, and gistbuild.c is only 21% covered. I noticed this after adding an assertion that I expected gistInitBuildBuffers to fail on, and nonetheless getting through check-world just fine. Why is this so bad? It's not like the gist regression test isn't ridiculously expensive already; I'd have expected it to provide darn near 100% coverage for what it's costing in runtime. regards, tom lane