This commit makes psycopg2 responsible for sending the status update
(feedback) messages to the server regardless of whether a synchronous or
asynchronous connection is used.
Feedback is sent every *status_update* (default value is 10) seconds,
which could be configured by passing a corresponding parameter to the
`start_replication()` or `start_replication_expert()` methods.
The actual feedback message is sent by the
`pq_read_replication_message()` when the *status_update* timeout is
reached.
The default behavior of the `send_feedback()` method is changed.
It doesn't send a feedback message on every call anymore but just
updates internal structures. There is still a way to *force* sending
a message if *force* or *reply* parameters are set.
The new approach has certain advantages:
1. The client can simply call the `send_feedback()` for every
processed message and the library will take care of not overwhelming
the server. Actually, in the synchronous mode it is even mandatory
to confirm every processed message.
2. The library tracks internally the pointer of the last received
message which is not keepalive. If the client confirmed the last
message and after that server sends only keepalives with increasing
*wal_end*, the library can safely move forward *flush* position to
the *wal_end* and later automatically report it to the server.
Reporting of the *wal_end* received from keepalive messages is very
important. Not doing so casing:
1. Excessive disk usage, because the replication slot prevents from
WAL being cleaned up.
2. The smart and fast shutdown of the server could last indefinitely
because walsender waits until the client report *flush* position
equal to the *wal_end*.
This implementation is only extending the existing API and therefore
should not break any of the existing code.
This class was deprecated in
27cd6c4880 (Dec 2, 2012), which was first
included in release 2.5. Enough time has passed for library uses to find
an alternative solution.
This class was untested.
I'm still fought whether docs should be in the C module or in the .rst.
I'd prefer the first because DRY, but writing multiline strings in C
really sucks.
