get a large enough part of the page to include the beginning of the next
record we're interested in. The XLogPageRead callback uses the requested
length to decide which timeline to stream WAL from, and if the first call
is short, and the page contains a timeline switch, we'll repeatedly try
to stream that page from the old timeline, and never get across the
timeline switch.
XLogReadRecord should reset its state on every error, to make sure it
re-reads the page on next call. It was inconsistent in that some errors did
that, but some did not.
In ReadRecord(), don't give up on an error if we're in standby mode. The
loop was set up to retry, but the checks within the loop broke out of the
loop on any error.
Andres Freund, with some tweaking by me.
This new facility can not only be used by xlog.c to carry out crash
recovery, but also by external programs. By supplying a function to
read XLog pages from somewhere, all the WAL reading can be used for
completely different purposes.
For the standard backend use, the behavior should be pretty much the
same as previously. As for non-backend programs, an hypothetical
pg_xlogdump program is now closer to reality, but some more backend
support is still necessary.
This patch was originally submitted by Andres Freund in a different
form, but Heikki Linnakangas opted for and authored another design of
the concept. Andres has advanced the patch since Heikki's initial
version. Review and some (mostly cosmetics) changes by me.
Heikki Linnakangas
Alvaro Herrera