Bootstrap determines whether a column is null based on simple builtin
rules. Those work surprisingly well, but nonetheless a few existing
columns aren't set correctly. Additionally there is at least one patch
sent to hackers where forcing the nullness of a column would be helpful.
The boostrap format has gained FORCE [NOT] NULL for this, which will be
emitted by genbki.pl when BKI_FORCE_(NOT_)?NULL is specified for a
column in a catalog header.
This patch doesn't change the marking of any existing columns.
Discussion: 20150215170014.GE15326@awork2.anarazel.de
pg_attribute, by having genbki.pl derive the information from the various
catalog header files. This greatly simplifies modification of the
"bootstrapped" catalogs.
This patch finally kills genbki.sh and Gen_fmgrtab.sh; we now rely entirely on
Perl scripts for those build steps. To avoid creating a Perl build dependency
where there was not one before, the output files generated by these scripts
are now treated as distprep targets, ie, they will be built and shipped in
tarballs. But you will need a reasonably modern Perl (probably at least
5.6) if you want to build from a CVS pull.
The changes to the MSVC build process are untested, and may well break ---
we'll soon find out from the buildfarm.
John Naylor, based on ideas from Robert Haas and others
in pg_proc. Also make it not emit duplicate extern declarations, and make it
a bit more bulletproof in some other small ways. Likewise fix the equally
hard-wired, and utterly undocumented, knowledge in the MSVC build scripts.
For testing purposes and perhaps other uses in future, pull out that portion
of the MSVC scripts into a standalone perl script equivalent to
Gen_fmgrtab.sh, and make it generate actually identical output, rather than
just more-or-less-the-same output.
Motivated by looking at Pavel's variadic function patch. Whether or not
that gets accepted, we can be sure that pg_proc's column set will change
again in the future; it's time to not have to deal with this gotcha.
Bruce Momjian
Andres Freund
Peter Eisentraut
Magnus Hagander
Tom Lane