Re: TODO questions

* Andrew Dunstan (andrew(at)dunslane(dot)net) wrote:
> Tom Lane wrote:
> >But the contrary position is that a comment is a comment, not something
> >that should act to change the state of the postmaster.
>
> I think that's a mis-statement of the issue, as I understand it, which
> seems to me to be this: Should the absence of an explicit setting in the
> config file result in keeping the previous setting of the item or in
> resetting it to the default value? Of course, the question is made more
> complex by the fact that you can set things by means other than the
> config file, and having your settings revert to some default might
> indeed cause some surprises. Notwithstanding that, I'm fairly firmly in
> the revert to default camp - I think on balance it conforms to the
> principle of least surprise.

I agree w/ Andrew on this, revert-to-default *is* what's expected by
most users/admins/etc, at least that I know. If we want something to be
a differential against the running config then let's pull out whatever
can be changed during runtime and write a .sql script that can be called
from the backend (set via the .conf) upon start and SIGHUP.

I think there'd be a great deal more understanding of how things work if
we then tell people that if they want to change things, change the .sql
and then run it, or run those commands themselves by hand; while the
.conf contains only those things that require a postmaster full restart
to be changed.

Just my 2c.

Thanks,

Stephen