Introduction to Hacking

PostgreSQL is well-modularized and contains (for the most part) very clean, well-documented code, making modification relatively easy, but the core distribution includes more than one million lines of code, so it can sometimes be difficult to figure out where and how to get started. In this talk, I'll discuss the developer tools that may be useful while modifying PostgreSQL, the major subsystems within the database server, PostgreSQL coding conventions and commonly-used idioms, and just a little bit about the PostgreSQL patch submission process. Topics will include nodes, datums, memory management, system caches, and locking.