Re: PostgreSQL pollutes the file system

Chris Travers <chris(dot)travers(at)adjust(dot)com> writes:
> On Wed, Mar 20, 2019 at 11:06 AM Andreas Karlsson <andreas(at)proxel(dot)se> wrote:
>> On 3/19/19 11:19 AM, Fred .Flintstone wrote:
>>> It would be better if these files were renamed to be prefixed with
>>> pg_, such as pg_createdb.
>>> Or even better postgresql-createdb then be reachable by through a
>>> "postgresql" wrapper script.

>> This topic has been discussed before e.g. in 2008 in
>> https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/47EA5CC0.8040102%40sun.com and
>> also more recently but I cannot find it in the archives right now.

And also before that, eg
https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/199910091253.IAA10670%40candle.pha.pa.us

> I wouldn't be opposed to this, but I would note two points on a deprecation
> cycle:
> 1 Given that people may have tools that work with all supported versions
> of PostgreSQL, this needs to be a long cycle, and
> 2. Managing that cycle makes it a little bit of a tough sell.

If we didn't pull the trigger twenty years ago, nor ten years ago,
we're not likely to do so now. Yeah, it's a mess and we'd certainly
do it differently if we were starting from scratch, but we're not
starting from scratch. There are decades worth of scripts out there
that know these program names, most of them not under our control.

Every time this has been looked at, we've concluded that the
distributed costs of getting rid of these program names would exceed
the value; and that tradeoff gets worse, not better, as more years
go by. I don't foresee it happening.

regards, tom lane