Re: Add --system-identifier / -s option to pg_resetwal

On Wed, Jun 04, 2025 at 06:49:31AM +0200, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> Maybe we can stop eating up short options? A long option seems sufficient
> for this.

Agreed.

> I don't see the need for interactive confirmation here. The user would have
> explicitly chosen the option, so they get what they asked for.

Yes, let's remove that. The patch is making --force hold a different
meaning that it currently has. And the tests will have less bloat
with their TTY parts gone.

Honestly, I don't think that we need that many tests in the scope of
this patch. Let's drop the hexa test, the empty test, the test with a
value of 1, the very-large-but-valid-value, and the second update.
These overlap with other tests or just rely on internals of getopt()
or of strtou64(), which eat cycles without really any added value.

+ The system identifier is a unique 64-bit number that identifies the
+ database cluster. It is used by replication systems and backup tools
+ to ensure they are working with the correct cluster. Changing the
+ system identifier makes the cluster incompatible with existing
+ backups, standby servers, and replication setups.

The first sentence of this paragraph is a close copy-paste of what's
in protocol.sgml. It would be nice to avoid these duplications.

Note the report generated by `git diff --check`, while on it, with a
couple of whitespaces reported.

FWIW, I've wanted that in the past when err.. Performing some
chirurgy on clusters.
--
Michael