This reverts 66c0185a3 (Allow planner to use Merge Append to
efficiently implement UNION) as well as the follow-on commits
d5d2205c8, 3b1a7eb28, 7487044d6. In addition to those, 07746a8ef
had to be removed then re-applied in a different place, because
66c0185a3 moved the relevant code.
The reason for this last-minute thrashing is that depesz found a
case in which the patched code creates a completely wrong plan
that silently gives incorrect query results. It's unclear what
the cause is or how many cases are affected, but with beta1 wrap
staring us in the face, there's no time for closer investigation.
After we figure that out, we can decide whether to un-revert this
for beta2 or hold it for v18.
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/Zktzf926vslR35Fv@depesz.com
(also some private discussion among pgsql-release)
The PostgreSQL contrib tree
---------------------------
This subtree contains porting tools, analysis utilities, and plug-in
features that are not part of the core PostgreSQL system, mainly
because they address a limited audience or are too experimental to be
part of the main source tree. This does not preclude their
usefulness.
User documentation for each module appears in the main SGML
documentation.
When building from the source distribution, these modules are not
built automatically, unless you build the "world" target. You can
also build and install them all by running "make all" and "make
install" in this directory; or to build and install just one selected
module, do the same in that module's subdirectory.
Some directories supply new user-defined functions, operators, or
types. To make use of one of these modules, after you have installed
the code you need to register the new SQL objects in the database
system by executing a CREATE EXTENSION command. In a fresh database,
you can simply do
CREATE EXTENSION module_name;
See the PostgreSQL documentation for more information about this
procedure.