> Postgres codebase is a shining example of good engineering. They walk a very fine line between many drawbacks. Code is battle tested (and surprisingly readable). Not many people (or groups) can do much better - and if they think they can, they are probably going to learn a lesson in humility.

To be fair, we have/PG has plenty crud-y code... Some of it even written by yours truly :(. Including some of the code involved here.

But just saying "go back to the drawing board" without really understanding the problem isn't particularly useful.

I'd be happy to make the changes to the codebase but there's definitely scope for improvement. Putting a sleep to avoid repeated lock acquisition should have raised an eyebrow or two when it was implemented.

As mentioned, there should be a read-replica specific code that works using event listeners. Repurposing the primary's code is what causes the issue.

The following pseudocode would give a better picture on the next steps

// Read replica specific implementation

void StandbyWaitForTransactionCompletion(TransactionId xid) {

// Register to receive WAL notifications about this transaction RegisterForWALNotification(xid);

    while (TransactionIdIsInProgress(xid)) {
        // Wait for WAL record indicating transaction completion
        WaitForWALEvent();
        CHECK_FOR_INTERRUPTS();
        
        // Process any incoming WAL records
        ProcessIncomingWAL();
    }
    
    UnregisterForWALNotification(xid);
}