ALTER SYSTEM between upgrades

On Tue, Jul 7, 2020 at 04:18:21PM -0400, Alvaro Herrera wrote:
> On 2020-Jul-07, Amit Kapila wrote:
>
> > I don't think this is true. We seem to have introduced three new guc
> > variables in a 9.3.3 minor release.
>
> Yeah, backporting GUCs is not a big deal. Sure, the GUC won't appear in
> postgresql.conf files generated by initdb prior to the release that
> introduces it. But users that need it can just edit their .confs and
> add the appropriate line, or just do ALTER SYSTEM after the minor
> upgrade. For people that don't need it, it would have a reasonable
> default (probably work_mem, so that behavior doesn't change on the minor
> upgrade).

I am creating a new thread to discuss the question raised by Alvaro of
how many ALTER SYSTEM settings are lost during major upgrades. Do we
properly document that users should migrate their postgresql.conf _and_
postgresql.auto.conf files during major upgrades? I personally never
thought of this until now.

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> https://momjian.us
EnterpriseDB https://enterprisedb.com

The usefulness of a cup is in its emptiness, Bruce Lee