Re: [PATCHES] postmaster/postgres merge for testing

On Mon, 2006-01-23 at 11:13 -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
> Peter Eisentraut <peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net> writes:
> > Attached is a patch that merges postmaster and postgres into just a
> > postmaster command.
>
> I had some second thoughts about this, specifically about which
> direction do we really want to go in. With this patch, it no longer
> really matters what the executable file is named, right? We were both
> implicitly assuming that the name should end up being "postmaster",
> but I think there's a good case to be made that the right thing to do
> is to migrate in the direction of having just one executable named
> "postgres". We've seen complaints before that having a daemon named
> "postmaster" confuses newbies into thinking it's got something to do
> with mail. And it's already the case that the child processes all call
> themselves "postgres", which will become even more confusing if there is
> no longer any executable named "postgres".
>
> If we went in this direction we'd have to keep the installed
> postmaster->postgres symlink for awhile to avoid breaking existing
> start scripts, but it could be deprecated and then removed in a few
> releases.
>
> Thoughts?

This is clearly better, IMNSHO. I did wonder about postgresqld or
postgresd or some such - many server programs end in "d" or ".d" to
distinguish them from client programs. But probably just "postgres" is
best.

cheers

andrew