Re: [HACKERS] Re: HISTORY for 6.5.2

> > While we are thinking about this, I wonder if it wouldn't be a good idea
> > to separate out the executables that aren't really intended to be
> > executed willy-nilly, and put them in a different directory.
> > postmaster, postgres, and initdb have no business being in users' PATH
> > at all, ever.
> Such as /usr/sbin on a Linux FSSTND-compliant system (such as RedHat). In
> fact, I may just do that with the RPM distribution (after consulting with RedHat
> on the issue). Thomas?? The same goes for the admin commands' man pages --
> they should be in section 8 on the typical Linux box.

Man page sections can be reassigned for the next release. afaik
/usr/sbin tends to contain programs executed by root, which is not
usually the case for Postgres. Is there a precedent for other programs
of this type in that directory?

> > I suppose such an admin could stick pg_ on the front of the
> > symlinks anyway. But then the program names don't match the
> > documentation we supply, which would be confusing.

Underscores in program names suck. To paraphrase Ali, "no opinion,
just fact" ;)

If we are going to rename programs wholesale, let's do it for release
7.0, and if we must have "pg" in front of everything, then do it as,
e.g. "pgcreateuser". We could rename "pg_dump" as "pgdump" at the same
time.

btw, is it only me or do other people refer to this as "pig dump"?

> Well, as things stand, the documentation and the rpm distribution don't match
> in other areas -- I personally would have absolutely no problem whatsoever in
> doing such a renaming -- hey, I can do such inside the RPM, for that matter,
> but I don't want to. Of course, I would follow whatever the core group decides
> -- that is the standard. I'm just tossing ideas.

The docs don't claim to match the rpm (or any other real system; as
the intro claims it is just used as an example). The docs *do* claim
to know about what program you should run, so those names should never
change unless done in the official distro.

- Thomas

--
Thomas Lockhart lockhart(at)alumni(dot)caltech(dot)edu
South Pasadena, California