---
id: engine-pg-lo-joint
name: the pg-lo joint contribution — staged-put mechanics into the store-held tx
status: completed
depends_on: []
scope: moderate
risk: high
impact: component
level: implementation
tags: [wave-6, engines, pg-lo, gc]
---

## Description

Land the **pg-lo engine's joint contribution** — the wave-5 deferred
design point, recorded in `src/pg_lo.rs`'s scope boundary ("the *fleet*
joint form (wave 6's store-held tx, ADR-012 §4/§5's ruling that pg-lo
contributes LO writes + companion-row insert into it) is a wave-6
design point") and in `src/gc.rs`'s `EngineFleetState::joint_put`
clause doc ("an engine-task contribution against this `JointTx`
type"). Under the fleet consolidation posture (kv = postgres +
large = pg-lo, same pg instance — admitted by
`store-fleet-construction`'s predicate), a large entry's content
reaches the **same store-held transaction** the pin row commits in:
one tx over the shared instance — the pg-lo engine contributes its
staged-put mechanics (chunked `lowrite` + companion-row insert) into
it; the pin-row insert and the commit stay the store's (`pin_commit`,
the postgres host's clause — landed wave 4, unchanged here).

- **The one-tx ruling** (ADR-012 §4): the store core holds one
  transaction over the shared instance; the pg-lo engine contributes
  LO writes + companion-row insert; the pin-row insert is the store's.
  The engine sees pins only as rows; never as semantics (ADR-010 §2's
  correction of ADR-009's ownership statement — nothing of
  `EngineFleetState` lands on pg-lo itself; the contribution is
  mechanics the store core drives).
- **The contribution's API shape** — the named design point wave 5
  deferred. The engine's existing staged put holds its own tx (the
  held-tx posture: the staging cursor owns a pool checkout with an
  explicit session-level `BEGIN`); the joint form inverts the
  ownership — the store core's `PgJointTx` (the postgres engine's
  held checkout, wave 4's recorded shape) is the tx the LO writes
  ride. **Named design point — the contribution's API home**: decide
  the shape consistent with the seam's ownership rule (the store
  holds the tx; the engine contributes mechanics into it) — the
  natural shapes are a crate-internal pg-lo method taking
  `&mut PgJointTx` (the engine writes `lo_create`/`lowrite` +
  the companion-row insert through the held checkout) or a joint
  staging-cursor variant handed out against the held tx; decide,
  record, and keep the public trait surface untouched (the
  contribution is crate-internal, like every seam clause). The
  `JointTx` type is the postgres engine's `PgJointTx` — the
  consolidation posture's one shared instance is what makes the
  type shareable (ADR-012 §4's checkable clause;
  `store-fleet-construction` enforces it).
- **The staged-put mechanics, re-shaped not re-written**: the 512 KiB
  `lowrite` knee (`LOWRITE_CHUNK`, the C2 citation), the CAS
  existence check first (a re-put commits an empty contribution,
  never `lo_create`), the companion-row insert, transactional LO
  creation (zero crash orphans — C6, structurally: the LO lives and
  dies with the store-held tx) — the engine's landed bodies carry;
  what changes is whose tx they run in. The engine-level held-tx
  staging cursor is **unchanged** (the non-fleet put path keeps its
  own tx; the wave-5 hygiene tests stay green untouched).
- **Failure discipline**: every failure path inside the contribution
  leaves the store-held tx in a state the driver can terminate — the
  contribution never commits, never rolls back the store's tx
  unilaterally (the driver owns termination; amendment A1's
  discipline — the driver task owns the catch-propagate-terminate
  design; this task's duty is that the contribution's error paths
  compose with it: no partial LO state that outlives the tx's
  rollback, which transactional LO creation already guarantees).
- **Contract tests** (engine-level, in `src/pg_lo.rs`'s test module,
  the established env-driven convention): the contribution writes LO
  content + the companion row into a `begin_joint_tx`-held tx and
  `pin_commit` publishes entry + pin row in one step (byte-exact
  round-trip after commit); a forced failure mid-contribution aborts
  the whole tx with zero residue (no LO pages, no companion row, no
  pin row, no kv row — the stage-hygiene invariant's tx form, the
  wave-4 joint-atomicity test's pg-lo edition); the CAS re-put form
  (a second contribution of the same key commits an empty
  contribution; the pin row upsert-renews); the 512 KiB knee rides
  (a multi-chunk contribution). **Tests need a live server** — the
  alkstore harness convention: env-driven (`ALKBLOBS_PG_*`), skip
  cleanly server-less, acceptance requires green against the harness
  server (`pglo-poc`, :15432, db `blobs`, `postgres`/`poc` — verified
  live 2026-10-12). Adopt the `SchemaJanitor`/per-test-database
  isolation posture from the start (amendment A2's lesson — the
  wave-4 leak is not re-learned).
- **Scope boundary**: the store-core driver that calls this
  contribution on the fleet put path is `store-fleet-put`; this task
  ships the engine-side mechanics and their contract tests. The
  non-fleet pg-lo put path is untouched.

## Acceptance Criteria

- [ ] The pg-lo joint contribution exists behind the crate-internal
      seam (the public trait surface untouched; nothing of
      `EngineFleetState` implemented on pg-lo itself)
- [ ] The contribution's API shape decided and recorded (the
      store-held `PgJointTx` is the tx the LO writes ride; the
      ownership rule honored — the engine contributes, never owns)
- [ ] One-tx publish: LO content + companion row + pin row + kv row
      commit in one step; byte-exact round-trip after `pin_commit`
      (contract-tested)
- [ ] Zero residue on any failure path (no LO pages, no companion
      row, no pin row, no kv row — contract-tested with a forced
      failure); the contribution's error paths compose with the
      driver's termination discipline (A1)
- [ ] The CAS re-put form (empty contribution, upsert-renewal) and
      the 512 KiB knee contract-tested
- [ ] The non-fleet held-tx staging path and its wave-5 hygiene tests
      unchanged and green
- [ ] `cargo test --features "pg-lo,postgres"` green server-less
      (skipping) and against the harness server at acceptance;
      `cargo clippy --all-targets -- -D warnings` and
      `cargo fmt --check` green (default + the pg-lo variants);
      `cargo doc --no-deps` clean

## References

- src/pg_lo.rs (the scope boundary recording this task; the held-tx
  staging bodies this re-shapes; `LOWRITE_CHUNK`)
- src/gc.rs (`EngineFleetState::joint_put`'s clause doc — the
  contribution's seam home; `JointTx`'s ownership rule)
- src/postgres.rs (`PgJointTx` — the held-checkout tx type; the
  wave-4 recorded design points)
- docs/architecture/decisions/012-pre-decomposition-consistency-rulings.md
  §4 (the one-tx ruling; the same-instance clause)
- docs/architecture/decisions/010-backend-io-seams-and-fleet-state-home.md
  §2 (the ownership rule; the pg-lo correction)
- docs/architecture/decisions/009-pg-lo-large-tier-engine.md (the
  engine shape the mechanics carry)
- docs/research/poc-pglo-findings.md (C2 the knee, C6 zero orphans)
- tasks/engine-pg-lo.md (the staged-put bodies this extends)
- tasks/review-wave-4.md (amendment A1 — the drop discipline the
  contribution composes with)

## Notes

> The contribution's API shape (the named design point) — **decided: the
> joint staging-cursor variant**, not a whole-value method taking
> `&mut PgJointTx`. Landed as `PgLoBackend::put_joint_staged(&self, tx:
> &mut PgJointTx) -> PgLoJointStaging<'_>` in `src/pg_lo.rs` (gated
> `feature = "postgres"` — `pg-lo` does not imply `postgres`, ADR-013
> §4; both pure builds compile). The deciding facts: (1) the large
> tier's put contract is the streaming staging cursor
> (`StagingCursor`/`ReadCursor`), and store-fleet-put routes to the
> joint form "exactly as the non-fleet path routes to the staged form"
> — stage-while-hashing, the key resolving at stream end — so a
> whole-value method would force the driver to materialize every large
> entry, regressing the memory posture; (2) the unknown-length flow's
> derivation pass re-reads the staged artifact through the cursor's
> read seam, the engine-level `PgLoStaging` shape — a whole-value
> method cannot serve any of it; (3) the cursor is exactly "the staged
> put with inverted ownership" — the task description's own framing —
> the landed bodies re-homed, not re-written. Consequence recorded:
> the CAS existence check lands at **publish** (the key resolves
> there), the landed `PgLoStaging::publish` shape — a re-put publishes
> an **empty contribution** (the staged LO unlinked *inside the
> store-held tx*, so the committed tx carries nothing of the losing
> put; zero residue; the driver's `pin_commit` then upsert-renews the
> pin row), while a concurrent CAS miss surfaces the companion key's
> unique violation (the landed puts' posture: check = fast path, PK =
> hard guarantee). "Never `lo_create`" holds literally only in the
> engine-level whole-value put — the cursor form's handout must create
> the LO before the key exists — but the LO lives and dies with the
> store-held tx (C6, structural), so a losing put leaves zero residue
> either way (contract-tested: the re-put form's catalog stays at
> exactly the first writer's pages).
>
> **Ownership rule honored, literally:** `PgLoJointStaging` borrows the
> held checkout (`&'a mut PgJointTx`); it owns no checkout, opens no
> tx, never COMMITs, never ROLLBACKs — including on `Drop` (no Drop
> impl: the driver owns termination on every path, amendment A1). Its
> failure paths (statement failures, the injected media failure after
> the tail flush, the concurrent-PK race) return with the tx exactly
> as the contribution found it — open, uncommitted, un-rolled-back —
> composing with the driver's catch-propagate-terminate (A1) with no
> partial LO state that outlives the termination's rollback
> (transactional LO creation). The engine-level held-tx staging cursor
> and the non-fleet put path are byte-unchanged (wave-5 hygiene tests
> green untouched); nothing of `EngineFleetState` is implemented on
> pg-lo; the public trait surface untouched.
>
> **Enabling affordance (minimal, for the contribution and the next
> driver task):** `PgJointTx::client()` — a crate-internal accessor
> returning `&Object` (the field stays private), documented as the
> statement surface every joint contribution rides. The contract
> tests' driver-side ROLLBACK (the forced-failure form) and the future
> store-fleet-put driver's A1 termination design are the consumers;
> the accessor is deliberately *not* an abort verb (A1: an explicit
> abort verb would need a new ADR — the store core's driver issues its
> termination through the exposed checkout; that design decision
> remains the driver task's).
>
> **Tests** (`src/pg_lo.rs` `mod joint`, feature `postgres`-gated, the
> env-driven convention, per-test dedicated databases from the start —
> amendment A2's lesson honored; the probes ride the pg-lo engine's
> pool over the kv host's tables: one instance, one schema): the
> one-tx publish (kv host's `joint_put` row + LO content + companion
> row through the joint cursor + `pin_commit`'s pin row, byte-exact
> round-trips of both entries after commit, exactly one LO with
> exactly its page count); the forced-failure zero-residue form
> (injection after the tail flush, driver ROLLBACK, all four artifact
> families absent); the CAS re-put form (empty contribution, first
> writer wins, pin row upsert-renewed, zero losing-LO residue); the
> 512 KiB knee (64 KiB appends aggregating into multi-`LOWRITE_CHUNK`
> statements, boundary-crossing read-back, multi-chunk round-trip).

## Summary

The pg-lo engine's joint contribution landed: under the consolidation
posture (kv = postgres + large = pg-lo, same pg instance), a large
entry's content reaches the store-held joint transaction —
`put_joint_staged` hands the `PgLoJointStaging` staging cursor against
the postgres engine's held `PgJointTx` checkout; the cursor rides the
held tx for every statement (chunked 512 KiB `lowrite` aggregation,
read-your-own-writes `lo_get` windows for the derivation pass, the
publish-time CAS, the companion-row insert or the re-put's in-tx
`lo_unlink` empty-contribution form, transactional LO creation), and
the store's `pin_commit` — landed wave 4, unchanged — publishes entry +
pin row and commits in one step. The ownership rule is honored
structurally: the engine contributes mechanics into the tx it does not
own, never committing or rolling it back on any path (A1's discipline;
the `PgJointTx::client()` accessor is the checkout surface). The public
trait surface is untouched; nothing of `EngineFleetState` exists on
pg-lo; the engine-level held-tx staging cursor and the non-fleet put
path are byte-unchanged. Verified: `cargo test` (default) green;
`--features "pg-lo,postgres"` green server-less (skipping cleanly) and
against the harness server (pglo-poc, :15432 — live, all four joint
contract tests plus the full pg_lo and conformance suites green);
`--all-features` green; clippy `-D warnings` green (default, postgres,
pg-lo+postgres, all-features, and the pg-lo-pure builds
`--no-default-features --features "pg-lo,mem"` and
`--features "postgres,pg-lo"`); `cargo fmt --check` green; `cargo doc
--no-deps` clean. The store-core driver that calls this contribution on
the fleet put path is `store-fleet-put` (this task's scope boundary —
recorded in the module doc and here).