electric-sql/electric

Feature request: document why a shape handle might get deleted

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#2,680 opened on May 6, 2025

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 (1 comment) (1 reaction) (0 assignees)Elixir (329 forks)batch import
documentationgood first issuehelp wanted

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Description

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. People wonder why shapes get deleted. Especially if they have very large shapes as recreating and reloading them into clients can get expensive.

If they understand why it's happening, they might be able to reduce how often shapes are recreated by e.g. preserving their shapes logs when restarting their Electric instance.

Describe the solution you'd like Document the reasons for shape deletions:

  1. the server is restarted and loses all its shape logs
  2. pg has an error of some sort that isn't recoverable so electric deletes all the shapes
  3. probably most common, there's a schema change to the table the shape uses so the log is missing the new data

Contributor guide

Research direction
Investigate the Electric source code to identify the conditions under which shape handles are deleted. Look at server restart handling, error recovery, and schema change detection. Then draft documentation explaining these scenarios.
Tech stack
elixir
Domain
documentation
Issue type
Documentation
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
2
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
Under 1 hour
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
Active
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
Clear
Prerequisites
None
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
70