Re: initdb - creating clusters

On Sat, Jul 11, 2020 at 2:37 PM Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:

> Another approach would be to put something along this line at the heads
> of each of the relevant sections, which'd be 18.1, 18.2, 18.3, 18.5,
> and 18.6 by my count. That seems very repetitive; but it would have
> the advantage that people could hardly miss it.
>
> I do agree that we ought to do something here. I think only a small
> minority of users build their own Postgres installations anymore.
>

Taken to an extreme...

Presently 16 and 17 explicitly describe source installation. 18 extends
upon how to go about using a source installation but then also dives into
topics that are relevant regardless of the architecture of the server
binaries, and to some extent more accurately represents "server
configuration" or maybe "server-os integration" if you want to keep that
stuff in its own chapter. So 18 gets split with 18 retaining the material
that pertains to source installed binaries. Then add a new chapter, 18.3
(overall numbering will shift), making mention of package installers and
maybe even allow for some detail to be covered in that chapter before
handing the user off to the distro's documentation. Then 18.6 gets
"server-os integration/configuration" while 19 remains "server
configuration".

David J.

p.s. This thread started on the 9th and Laurenz responded on the 10th but
this email (11th) from Tom is the first I've seen of this thread. As
I write this I haven't seen Daniel's response but I do see Tom's reply to
Daniel's reponse. This "I see responses but not originals" is quite common
for me. Using GMail.