Re: [PATCH] Rename pg_switch_xlog to pg_switch_wal

* Tom Lane (tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us) wrote:
> Stephen Frost <sfrost(at)snowman(dot)net> writes:
> > I just don't buy this argument, at all. These functions names are
> > certainly not the only things we're changing with PG10 and serious
> > monitoring/backup/administration tools are almost certainly going to
> > have quite a bit to adjust to with the new release, and that isn't news
> > to anyone who works with PG.
>
> Hmm --- we've been conducting this argument in a vacuum, but you're right,
> we should consider what else is changing in v10. If you can point to
> already-committed changes that mean that code using these functions will
> almost certainly need changes anyway for v10, then that would greatly
> weaken the argument for providing aliases.

We changed the pg_xlog directory to be pg_wal, that's certainly going to
have an impact on monitoring and backup tools.

We've also made changes in, at least, what's reported in
pg_stat_activity and there's been discussions about changing it further
(list background workers or not, etc), and in pg_stat_replication (with
the addition of quorum-based sync rep). In fact, these kinds of changes
are almost certainly going to require more work for tool authors to deal
with than just a simple function name change.

And that's only with a few minutes of looking at the commit log and I
don't doubt that there's more and that we're going to have even more
before feature freeze that a serious monitoring tool will have to be
updated for.

As long as we properly include these changes in the release notes for
tool authors, I really don't see any of them as a big deal.

Thanks!

Stephen