Subject: [HACKERS] linux/alpha patches
These patches lay the groundwork for a Linux/Alpha port. The port doesn't
actually work unless you tweak the linker to put all the pointers in the
first 32 bits of the address space, but it's at least a start. It
implements the test-and-set instruction in Alpha assembly, and also fixes
a lot of pointer-to-integer conversions, which is probably good anyway.
I found another bug in btree index. Looking at the code it seems that NULL
keys are never used to build or scan a btree index (see the explain commands
in the example). However this is not the case when a null key is retrieved
in an outer loop of a join select and used in an index scan of an inner loop.
This bug causes at least three kinds of problems:
1) the backend crashes when it tries to compare a text string with a null.
2) it is not possible to find tuples with null keys in a join.
3) null is considered equal to 0 when the datum is passed by value, see
the last query.
Submitted by: Massimo Dal Zotto <dz@cs.unitn.it>
Marc G. Fournier
Vadim B. Mikheev