Bug Report: Uninitialized Value in is_autoinc Method ( PostgreSQL Migration )

[Diogo-Rego]

Use of uninitialized value $field in string eq at Sympa/DatabaseDriver/PostgreSQL.pm line 155

Version

• Sympa: v6.2.72
• PostgreSQL: v14
• OS: Ubuntu-24.04

Installation method

Installed via: [ source code ]

Expected behavior

The is_autoinc function should correctly check whether a database field is an autoincrement column without causing warnings, even on the first database migration.

Actual behavior

Sympa logs the following warning when checking for autoincrement fields:

Use of uninitialized value $field in string eq at /opt/sympa/share/sympa/lib/Sympa/DatabaseDriver/PostgreSQL.pm line 155.

However, if a second migration is attempted, the error does not appear again.

This suggests that the required database sequences might not exist or be detected properly during the initial migration but are available afterward.

Steps to reproduce

1. Perform the first database migration for Sympa with PostgreSQL.
2. Observe the warning in the logs.
3. Perform a second migration.
4. Notice that the warning does not appear again.

Additional information

The issue is located in Sympa/DatabaseDriver/PostgreSQL.pm, specifically in the is_autoinc function.
A possible fix is to check if $field is defined before performing the comparison:

my $field = $sth->fetchrow();
return (defined $field && $field eq $seqname);

Since this only happens during the first migration, it is possible that some tables or sequences are not created yet at the moment this function runs. Adding a debug log before executing the SQL query could help confirm this hypothesis.