Re: location of the configuration files

On Wed, 2003-02-12 at 08:24, Kevin Brown wrote:
> Tom Lane wrote:
> > You can only justify it as simpler if you propose hardwiring a value
> > for $SOMECONFIGDIRECTORY ...
>
> Making things simpler from the standpoint of the code isn't the point.
> Making things simpler for the DBA and/or Unix sysadmin is.
>
> I'd say $SOMECONFIGDIRECTORY should be a hardwired default with a
> command line override.
>
> I doubt you'll get a whole lot of argument from the general user
> community if you say that the hard wired default should be
> /etc/postgresql.
>
> > which is a proposal that will not fly with any of the core
> > developers, because we all run multiple versions of Postgres on our
> > machines so that we can deal with back-version bug reports, test
> > installations, etc.
>
> I absolutely agree that the config directory to use should be
> something that can be controlled with a command line option.
>
> > It is unlikely to fly with any of the RPM packagers either, due to
> > the wildly varying ideas out there about the One True Place where
> > applications should put their config files.
>
> There seems to be substantial agreement among the distribution
> maintainers that config files belong somewhere in /etc. At least,
> I've seen very little disagreement with that idea except from people
> who believe that each package should have its own, separate directory
> hierarchy. And the fact that the vast majority of packages put their
> config files somewhere in /etc supports this.
>
> Debian, for instance, actually *does* put the PostgreSQL config files
> in /etc/postgresql and creates symlinks in the data directory that
> point to them. This works, but it's a kludge.
>

Seems like a good compromise would be to make the hard wired default
$SOMECONFIGDIRECTORY be $PGDATA; this makes each version of the software
more self contained/ less likely to interfere with another installation.
(This becomes really handy when doing major upgrades). If you really
have a strong desire to change this, you can.

As I see it, this change would (should?) need to be something that could
be changed in the configure script when building postgresql, as well
changeable via a command line option, any other places?

Robert Treat