Re: Renaming some binaries

On 2016-08-26 13:26:39 -0300, Euler Taveira wrote:
> I'm bringing this $subject into discussion again. Historically, we are
> carrying binary names that have been confused newbies. createuser is the
> worst name so for. Also, names like createdb, initdb, reindexdb, and
> droplang does not suggest what product it is referring to. Adding a
> prefix (pg_, pg, ...) would 'make things clear'. If we have a consensus
> about this change, I suggest renaming the following binaries:
>
> clusterdb
> createdb
> createlang
> createuser
> dropdb
> droplang
> dropuser
> initdb
> oid2name
> reindexdb
> vacuumdb
> vacuumlo

Uhm, that'd need a careful backward compatibility plan, including a period of
supporting both names.

> Another major change related to this topic is assemble functionalities
> from binaries. We currently have 34 binaries

> (is that a lot for a single software?).

Does it matter? The few bytes of disk space are essentially irrelevant.

That said, on the code level, there'd be considerable benefit of coalescing:

> pg_command: clusterdb, createdb, dropdb, createuser, dropuser,
> createlang, droplang, reindexdb, vacuumdb, vacuumlo.

these commands. We could do the old trick of leaving the old names as in
place as symlinks.

> initdb: we already have 'pg_ctl init' (since 9.0) and could remove
> initdb.

I fairly strongly against removing initdb as a separate binary. Issuies
during cluster creation are already annoying to debug.

This is a *significant* amount of work, it'll make backpatching a
nightmare (although not that much happens in these binaries). I
personally see better uses of my time.

Andres