Re: pg_upgrade's object listing

Hi,

On 2023-Oct-27, Kyotaro Horiguchi wrote:

> I found the following message recently introduced in pg_upgrade:
>
> > pg_log(PG_VERBOSE, "slot_name: \"%s\", plugin: \"%s\", two_phase: %s",
> > slot_info->slotname,
> > slot_info->plugin,
> > slot_info->two_phase ? "true" : "false");
>
> If the labels correspond to the struct member names, the first label
> ought to be "slotname". If not, all labels of this type, including
> those adjucent, should have a more natural spelling.
>
> What do you think about this?

I think this shouldn't be a translatable message in the first place.

Looking at the wording of other messages in pg_upgrade --verbose,it
doesn't look like any of it is intended for user consumption. I mean,
look at this monstrosity

pg_log(PG_VERBOSE, "relname: \"%s.%s\", reloid: %u, reltblspace: \"%s\"",

Before 249d74394500 it used to be even more hideous. This message comes
straight from the initial pg_upgrade commit in 2010, c2e9b2f28818, where
it was a debug message. We seem to have promoted it to a verbose
message (commit 717f6d60859c) for no particular reason and without
careful consideration.

I honestly doubt that this sort of message is in any way useful, other
than for program debugging. Maybe listing databases and perhaps slots
in verbose mode is OK, but tables? I don't think so.

--
Álvaro Herrera 48°01'N 7°57'E — https://www.EnterpriseDB.com/
"I'm impressed how quickly you are fixing this obscure issue. I came from
MS SQL and it would be hard for me to put into words how much of a better job
you all are doing on [PostgreSQL]."
Steve Midgley, http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-sql/2008-08/msg00000.php