Re: Command to prune archive at restartpoints

Robert Haas wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 11:58 AM, Greg Stark <gsstark(at)mit(dot)edu> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 9:43 AM, Simon Riggs <simon(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, 2010-03-17 at 11:37 +0200, Heikki Linnakangas wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> One awkward omission in the new built-in standby mode, mainly used for
>>>> streaming replication, is that there is no easy way to delete old
>>>> archived files like you do with the %r parameter to restore_command.
>>>>
>>> Would it be better to call this "archive_cleanup_command"? That might
>>> help people understand the need for and the use of this parameter.
>>>
>> This is bikeshedding but fwiw I like Simon's suggestion.
>>
>
> So, this thread is hanging out on our list of open items for 9.0. My
> personal opinion on it is that I don't really care much one way or the
> other. archive_cleanup_command does seem easier to understand, but
> restartpoint_command has the advantage of describing exactly when it
> gets run from a technical perspective, which might be a good thing,
> too. Since nobody's felt motivated to do anything about this for two
> and a half months and we've now been through two betas with it the way
> it is, I'm inclined to say we should just leave it alone. On the
> other hand, both of the people who voted in favor of changing it are
> committers, and if one of them feels like putting in the effort to
> change it, it won't bother me much, except that I feel it should get
> done RSN. But one way or the other we need to make a decision and get
> this off the list.
>
>

I prefer archive_cleanup_command. We should name things after their
principal function, not an implementation detail, IMNSHO.

More importantly, we should include an example in the docs. I created
one the other day when this was actually bothering me a bit (see
<http://people.planetpostgresql.org/andrew/index.php?/archives/85-Keeping-a-hot-standby-log-archive-clean.html>).
That seemed to work ok, but maybe it's too long, and maybe people would
prefer a shell script to perl.

cheers

andrew