Re: BUG #14242: Role with a setconfig "role" setting to a nonexistent role causes pg_upgrade to fail

>>>>> "Tom" == Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> writes:

> Andrew Gierth <andrew(at)tao11(dot)riddles(dot)org(dot)uk> writes:
>> I don't think this is documented but it has obvious uses.

Tom> Does it?

For ALTER ROLE, there's actually a question that comes up not all that
infrequently on irc: "how do I arrange things so that what user 'foo'
does, by default, ends up owned by group role 'bar'"

I'm pretty sure I have never actually suggested that anyone do it this
way (because I had no idea it worked until I tried it just now), but I
can see the use case.

Tom> If the named role is the same as the actual role, then it's
Tom> useless. If they're different, it seems at best confusing. In
Tom> the context of ALTER DATABASE SET, it seems both confusing and
Tom> possibly a security hazard.

It _appears_ to silently fail if the user logging in is not actually a
member of the specified role. I have not looked at the code.

--
Andrew (irc:RhodiumToad)