Re: Renaming of pg_xlog and pg_clog

On Thu, Oct 20, 2016 at 02:23:32PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> > On Thu, Oct 20, 2016 at 2:09 PM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> >> We have the two precedents "pg_subtrans" and "pg_multixact", so
> >> unless we want to get into renaming those too, I think "pg_trans"
> >> and "pg_xact" are really the only options worth considering.
> >>
> >> Personally I'd go for "pg_trans", but it's only a weak preference.
>
> > Heaven forfend we actually use enough characters to make it self-documenting.
>
> $ ls $PGDATA
> PG_VERSION pg_dynshmem/ pg_notify/ pg_stat_tmp/ postgresql.auto.conf
> base/ pg_hba.conf pg_replslot/ pg_subtrans/ postgresql.conf
> global/ pg_ident.conf pg_serial/ pg_tblspc/ postmaster.opts
> pg_clog/ pg_logical/ pg_snapshots/ pg_twophase/ postmaster.pid
> pg_commit_ts/ pg_multixact/ pg_stat/ pg_wal/
>
> I don't see one single one of those subdirectory names that I'd call
> self-documenting.

That's a problem we should do something about, even if we can't do it
by renaming these all in one go. At the very least, we can do this
for any new names.

> Are you proposing we rename them all with carpal-
> tunnel-syndrome-promoting names?

Are you saying that people are getting carpal tunnel syndrome from
hitting the tab key, which has been standard for completion in shells
for decades? I'm pretty sure that doesn't actually happen.

> There's certainly some case to be made for renaming at least one of
> "pg_subtrans" and "pg_multixact" so that these three similarly-purposed
> subdirectories can all have similar names. But I think on the whole
> that's (a) fixing what ain't broken, and (b) making it even more unlikely
> that we'll ever get to consensus on changing anything. We've managed to
> agree that we need to change the names ending in "log"; let's do that
> and be happy that we've removed one foot-gun from the system.

Removing foot guns, un-sexy as it may be from a developer's
perspective, is very useful work.

Best,
David.
--
David Fetter <david(at)fetter(dot)org> http://fetter.org/
Phone: +1 415 235 3778 AIM: dfetter666 Yahoo!: dfetter
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