If the old row has any "missing" attributes that are supposed to
be retrieved from an associated tuple descriptor, the wrong things
happened because the trigger result is shoved directly into an
executor slot that lacks the missing-attribute data. Notably,
CHECK-constraint verification would incorrectly see those columns
as NULL, and so would RETURNING-list evaluation.
Band-aid around this by forcibly expanding the tuple before passing
it to the trigger function. (IMO it was a fundamental misdesign to
put the missing-attribute data into tuple constraints, which so
much of the system considers to be optional. But we're probably
stuck with that now, and will have to continue to apply band-aids
as we find other places with similar issues.)
Back-patch to v12. v11 would also have the issue, except that
commit 920311ab1 already applied a similar band-aid. That forced
expansion in more cases than seem really necessary, though, so
this isn't a directly equivalent fix.
Amit Langote, with some cosmetic changes by me
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/16644-5da7ef98a7ac4545@postgresql.org
ba9f18abd3