Re: Script binaries renaming

On Wednesday 26 March 2008 12:17, Andrew Dunstan wrote:
> Zdenek Kotala wrote:
> > Tom Lane napsal(a):
> >> Zdenek Kotala <Zdenek(dot)Kotala(at)Sun(dot)COM> writes:
> >>> Why we have pg_dump and pg_dumpall? Or I think pg_resetxlog has same
> >>> output like pg_controldata. I think we can merge these commands.
> >>
> >> Now we're into change for the sake of change? Those programs don't
> >> have any naming problem.
> >
> > yes, but they are redundant
>
> Really? How so? They have overlapping functionality, but neither has a
> subset of the other's functionality.
>
> Possibly we should merge them, but that's a different issue, and in
> particular has nothing to do with renaming, so it doesn't belong in this
> thread.
>

Actually it does belong in this thread, at least in so much that we should
probably think about if we really want to do a bunch of command renaming when
there is a good chance we might want to change these names further in
subsequent releases to address real problems. (I'd be tempted to hold the
cosmetic changes untill we bump to 9.0 anyway, when backward
incompatabilities will make more sense)

One example of the above would be changing binaries to address the current
sub-par support for multiple versions of postgres on a single machine,
something like what debian/ubuntu have done with pg_lsclusters,
pg_initcluster, pg_ctlcluster, etc... istm a bad idea to rename initdb to
pg_init in the next release for what are mostly cosmetic reasons if in the
next 2 or 3 releases down the line we need to change it for more pratical
reasons.

(Side note: I know some people hate the debian changes to the various command
utilities because of the confusion it creates when trying to help people with
postgres; consider that at least those changes solve a class of problems, the
proposed changes will cause far more problems for end-users / helpers, and
for far less of a valid reason)

As for the problem faced by Sun, if they really have an issue with the naming
system, theres no reason they can't rename the binaries themselves to match
thier own naming standards since they control their own packages. I use
Solaris and this wouldn't bother me at all.

--
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter LAMP :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL