Re: improving user.c error messages

On Thu, Mar 09, 2023 at 10:55:54AM +0100, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> On 20.02.23 23:58, Nathan Bossart wrote:
>> For now, I've reworded these as "must inherit privileges of".
>
> I don't have a good mental model of all this role inheritance, personally,
> but I fear that this change makes the messages more jargony and less clear.
> Maybe the original wording was good enough.

I'm fine with that.

> "admin option" is sort of a natural language term, I think, so we don't need
> to parametrize it as "%s option". Also, there are no other "options" in
> this context, I think.

v16 introduces the INHERIT and SET options. I don't have a strong opinion
about parameterizing it, though. My intent was to consistently capitalize
all the attributes and options.

> A general thought: It seems we currently don't have any error messages that
> address the user like "You must do this". Do we want to go there? Should we
> try for a more impersonal wording like
>
> "You must have the %s attribute to create roles."
>
> "Current user must have the %s attribute to create roles."
>
> "%s attribute is required to create roles."

I think I like the last option the most. In general, I agree with trying
to avoid the second-person phrasing.

> By the way, I'm not sure what the separation between 0001 and 0002 is
> supposed to be.

I'll combine them. I first started with user.c only, but we kept finding
new messages to improve.

--
Nathan Bossart
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