Hacking on Postgres: An Overview
summary
Step‑by‑step roadmap for getting code into Postgres: use the mailing list & commitfests workflow, attach discussion threads in the CF app, and expect long asynchronous reviews; examine src/{backend,bin,test}, contrib, and docs to find readmes and call trees; use palloc/pfree and memory contexts and prefer built allocators (slab/generation) over malloc; follow style (tabs, 80 cols, brace placement); iterate locally with vim+tmux scripts, rebuild, run make check or tap tests, and debug crashes with gdb/ldb — demo shows an incremental‑sort patch that triggers a use‑after‑free and is found with the debugger.
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chapters (7)
- 0:00Introduction and context
- 3:40Community and patch process
- 13:52Contributor workflow
- 16:58Navigating the source code
- 24:00Internal facilities
- 37:00Development and debugging
- 47:51Testing and submission
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