Re: HBA files w/include support?

Stephen Frost <sfrost(at)snowman(dot)net> writes:
> Having @include and directory.d-style capabilities for pg_hba.conf *and*
> pg_ident.conf would make managing larger environments much better.

I'm a little suspicious of this, mainly because pg_hba searching is
necessarily linear (and none too cheap per-entry). I think anyone
who tries to use a set of entries large enough to really need multiple
files is going to have pain.

We already have various methods for making one pg_hba entry do the
work of many; for instance, IP-subnet entries, wildcards, and role
references. And you can use database CONNECT privilege grants as
another substitute for fine-grained pg_hba entries.

I'd be interested to see a real use-case where those things aren't
an adequate substitute for a pg_hba rule set that's too large to
fit conveniently in one file. Maybe we could identify another
pg_hba abstraction technique we need to support.

In short: I suspect this approach may be fixing the wrong thing.

regards, tom lane