Re: [PATCH] Stop ALTER SYSTEM from making bad assumptions

Stephen Frost <sfrost(at)snowman(dot)net> writes:
> * Tom Lane (tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us) wrote:
>> Perhaps we could put some of these details into the Notes section of the
>> ALTER SYSTEM ref page. But I wonder how much of this is needed at all.

> I'd be alright with that too, but I'd be just as fine with even a README
> or something that we feel other hackers and external tool developers
> would be likely to find. I agree that all of this isn't something that
> your run-of-the-mill DBA needs to know, but they are things that I'm
> sure external tool authors will care about (including myself, David S,
> probably the other backup/restore tool maintainers, and at least the
> author of pg_conftool, presumably).

In hopes of moving this along, I've pushed Ian's last code change,
as there seems to be no real argument about that anymore.

As for the doc changes, how about the attached revision of what
I wrote previously? It gives some passing mention to what ALTER
SYSTEM will do, without belaboring it or going into things that
are really implementation details.

As an example of the sort of implementation detail that I *don't*
want to document, I invite you to experiment with the difference
between
ALTER SYSTEM SET TimeZone = 'America/New_York';
ALTER SYSTEM SET "TimeZone" = 'America/New_York';

regards, tom lane