Re: [WIP] ALTER COLUMN IF EXISTS

> On 1 Apr 2022, at 02:30, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> "David G. Johnston" <david(dot)g(dot)johnston(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:

>> At present the project seems to largely consider the IF EXISTS/IF NOT
>> EXISTS features to have been largely a mistake and while removing it is not
>> going to happen the desire to change or extend it is not strong.
>
> That might be an overstatement.

ISTR that patches which have been rejected have largely added support for the
syntax for the sake of adding support for the syntax, not because there was a
need or usecase for it. When the patch is accompanied with an actual usecase
it's also easier to reason about.

Now, the usecase of "I wanted to to start working on PostgreSQL and this seemed
like a good first patch" is clearly also very important.

--
Daniel Gustafsson https://vmware.com/