Re: eliminate xl_heap_visible to reduce WAL (and eventually set VM on-access) - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

On Mon, Sep 8, 2025 at 2:54 PM Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Commit fd6ec93bf890314ac694dc8a7f3c45702ecc1bbd and other previous
> work has established the principle that when an error is potentially
> reachable in case of on-disk corruption, but is not expected to be
> reached otherwise, ERRCODE_DATA_CORRUPTED should be used. This allows
> log monitoring software to search for evidence of corruption by
> filtering on the error code.
>
> That kibitzing aside, I think this is pretty clearly the right thing to do.

Thanks for the suggested wording and the pointer to that thread.

I noticed that in that thread they decided to use errmsg_internal()
instead of errmsg() for a few different reasons -- one of which was
that the situation is not supposed to happen/cannot happen -- which I
don't really understand. It is a reachable code path. Another is that
it is extra work for translators, which I'm also not sure how to apply
to my situation. Are the VM corruption cases worth extra work to the
translators?

I think the most compelling reason is that people will want to search
for the error message in English online. So, for that reason, my
instinct is to use errmsg_internal() in my case as well.

- Melanie