Re: [PATCH] Rename pg_switch_xlog to pg_switch_wal

On 2017-02-09 20:02:54 -0500, Stephen Frost wrote:
> * Andres Freund (andres(at)anarazel(dot)de) wrote:
> > On 2017-02-09 19:19:21 -0500, Stephen Frost wrote:
> > > I'd love to nuke pg_shadow and all the other
> > > not-really-maintained backwards-compat things from when roles were
> > > added too.
> >
> > Not sure if it's worth the work to rip out and such, but I'm mildly
> > supportive of this one too. Depends a bit on what all the other things
> > are ;)
>
> Reviewing 7762619e95272974f90a38d8d85aafbe0e94add5 where roles were
> added, I find:
>
> pg_user - use pg_roles instead, which actually includes all of the role
> attributes, unlike pg_user

Hm, I presume this is the most used one.

> pg_group - use pg_auth_members instead, which includes the info about
> the admin option and the grantor

then this.

> pg_shadow - use pg_authid instead, which, again, actually includes all
> of the role attributes, unlike pg_shadow.

That's probably fine.

I'm fine with dropping now, alternatively we could, and that seems like
it'd institute a good practice, name them to be removed in 10+1 in the
10 release notes. "Upcoming removal of deprecated features" or such. And
schedule stuff for that regularly. Like e.g. dropping psql support for
< 9.0 (randomly chosen version), pg_dump support for very old versions,
etc, ...
While not everyone will be saved by that (by virtue of not reading /
reacting) it helps those that actually read the notes. Obviously
there'd still some incompatibilities that do not go through that
mechanism.

> I don't think we should remove things like CREATE USER, that's a
> perfectly reasonable and maintained interface, unlike the above views,
> which missed out on things like the 'createrole' role attribute.

Yea, that'd be a bad plan.

Greetings,

Andres Freund