• Tom Lane's avatar
    Fix ALTER COLUMN TYPE to not open a relation without any lock. · e27453bd
    Tom Lane authored
    If the column being modified is referenced by a foreign key constraint
    of another table, ALTER TABLE would open the other table (to re-parse
    the constraint's definition) without having first obtained a lock on it.
    This was evidently intentional, but that doesn't mean it's really safe.
    It's especially not safe in 9.3, which pre-dates use of MVCC scans for
    catalog reads, but even in current releases it doesn't seem like a good
    idea.
    
    We know we'll need AccessExclusiveLock shortly to drop the obsoleted
    constraint, so just get that a little sooner to close the hole.
    
    Per testing with a patch that complains if we open a relation without
    holding any lock on it.  I don't plan to back-patch that patch, but we
    should close the holes it identifies in all supported branches.
    
    Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/2038.1538335244@sss.pgh.pa.us
    e27453bd
tablecmds.c 460 KB