Make event persisters periodically announce position over replication. (#8499)

Currently background proccesses stream the events stream use the "minimum persisted position" (i.e. `get_current_token()`) rather than the vector clock style tokens. This is broadly fine as it doesn't matter if the background processes lag a small amount. However, in extreme cases (i.e. SyTests) where we only write to one event persister the background processes will never make progress.

This PR changes it so that the `MultiWriterIDGenerator` keeps the current position of a given instance as up to date as possible (i.e using the latest token it sees if its not in the process of persisting anything), and then periodically announces that over replication. This then allows the "minimum persisted position" to advance, albeit with a small lag.

1 files changed, 26 insertions, 10 deletions

diff --git a/synapse/replication/tcp/commands.py b/synapse/replication/tcp/commands.py
index 8cd47770c1..ac532ed588 100644
--- a/synapse/replication/tcp/commands.py
+++ b/synapse/replication/tcp/commands.py
@@ -141,15 +141,23 @@ class RdataCommand(Command):
 
 
 class PositionCommand(Command):
-    """Sent by the server to tell the client the stream position without
-    needing to send an RDATA.
+    """Sent by an instance to tell others the stream position without needing to
+    send an RDATA.
+
+    Two tokens are sent, the new position and the last position sent by the
+    instance (in an RDATA or other POSITION). The tokens are chosen so that *no*
+    rows were written by the instance between the `prev_token` and `new_token`.
+    (If an instance hasn't sent a position before then the new position can be
+    used for both.)
 
     Format::
 
-        POSITION <stream_name> <instance_name> <token>
+        POSITION <stream_name> <instance_name> <prev_token> <new_token>
 
-    On receipt of a POSITION command clients should check if they have missed
-    any updates, and if so then fetch them out of band.
+    On receipt of a POSITION command instances should check if they have missed
+    any updates, and if so then fetch them out of band. Instances can check this
+    by comparing their view of the current token for the sending instance with
+    the included `prev_token`.
 
     The `<instance_name>` is the process that sent the command and is the source
     of the stream.
@@ -157,18 +165,26 @@ class PositionCommand(Command):
 
     NAME = "POSITION"
 
-    def __init__(self, stream_name, instance_name, token):
+    def __init__(self, stream_name, instance_name, prev_token, new_token):
         self.stream_name = stream_name
         self.instance_name = instance_name
-        self.token = token
+        self.prev_token = prev_token
+        self.new_token = new_token
 
     @classmethod
     def from_line(cls, line):
-        stream_name, instance_name, token = line.split(" ", 2)
-        return cls(stream_name, instance_name, int(token))
+        stream_name, instance_name, prev_token, new_token = line.split(" ", 3)
+        return cls(stream_name, instance_name, int(prev_token), int(new_token))
 
     def to_line(self):
-        return " ".join((self.stream_name, self.instance_name, str(self.token)))
+        return " ".join(
+            (
+                self.stream_name,
+                self.instance_name,
+                str(self.prev_token),
+                str(self.new_token),
+            )
+        )
 
 
 class ErrorCommand(_SimpleCommand):