Re: postgres_fdw hint messages

On Thu, Aug 25, 2022 at 6:42 PM Peter Eisentraut <
peter(dot)eisentraut(at)enterprisedb(dot)com> wrote:

> The postgres_fdw tests contain this (as amended by patch 0001):
>
> ALTER SERVER loopback_nopw OPTIONS (ADD password 'dummypw');
> ERROR: invalid option "password"
> HINT: Valid options in this context are: service, passfile,
> channel_binding, connect_timeout, dbname, host, hostaddr, port, options,
> application_name, keepalives, keepalives_idle, keepalives_interval,
> keepalives_count, tcp_user_timeout, sslmode, sslcompression, sslcert,
> sslkey, sslrootcert, sslcrl, sslcrldir, sslsni, requirepeer,
> ssl_min_protocol_version, ssl_max_protocol_version, gssencmode,
> krbsrvname, gsslib, target_session_attrs, use_remote_estimate,
> fdw_startup_cost, fdw_tuple_cost, extensions, updatable, truncatable,
> fetch_size, batch_size, async_capable, parallel_commit, keep_connections
>
> This annoys developers who are working on libpq connection options,
> because any option added, removed, or changed causes this test to need
> to be updated.
>
> It's also questionable how useful this hint is in its current form,
> considering how long it is and that the options are in an
> implementation-dependent order.
>
>
Thanks Peter, for looking at that; this HINT message is growing over time.

In my opinion, we should hide the complete message in case of an invalid
option. But
try to show dependent options; for example, if someone specify "sslcrl" and
that option
require some more options, then show the HINT of that options.

Possible changes:
>
> - Hide the hint from this particular test (done in the attached patches).
>
>

> - Keep the hint, but maybe make it sorted?
>
> - Remove all the hints like this from foreign data commands.
>
> - Don't show the hint when there are more than N valid options.
>
> - Do some kind of "did you mean" like we have for column names.
>
> Thoughts?

--
Ibrar Ahmed