Re: Merging postgresql.conf and postgresql.auto.conf

On Mon, Jan 19, 2015 at 9:35 AM, Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>
> On Sat, Jan 17, 2015 at 12:19 AM, Amit Kapila <amit(dot)kapila16(at)gmail(dot)com>
wrote:
> > So are you telling that whenever we read, save the settings
> > to some catalog (probably a new one)?
>
> Which process are you imagining would do this? Certainly not the
postmaster.
>

I think whichever process reads postgresql.conf/postgresql.auto.conf have
to do this (unless we restrict that this will be done at some other time)
and
postmaster is one of them. It seems to me that it is not good idea unless
we do it at other time like populating entries for a view.

> Independently of that, it sounds like solving the problem from the
> wrong end. I think the idea of ALTER SYSTEM .. SET ought to be that
> you should EITHER edit postgresql.conf for all your configuration
> changes, OR you should use ALTER SYSTEM .. SET for all of your
> changes. If you mix-and-match, well, that's certainly allowed and it
> will work and everything, but you - as a human being - might get
> confused.

Right, but we can't completely eliminate such a possibility (as an
example we have some default settings like max_connections,
shared_buffers, etc). I agree with you that users should use only
way of changing the settings, however for certain rare cases (default
settings or some other) we can provide a way for user to know which
of the settings are duplicate. I think if we can provide such an
information via some view with ease then it's worth to have it.

With Regards,
Amit Kapila.
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com