Re: Configuration include directory

On tis, 2011-11-15 at 23:53 -0500, Greg Smith wrote:
> -Called by specifying "includedir <directory>". No changes to the
> shipped postgresql.conf yet.
> -Takes an input directory name
> -If it's not an absolute path, considers that relative to the -D option
> (if specified) or PGDATA, the same logic used to locate the
> postgresql.conf (unless a full path to it is used)
> -Considers all names in that directory that end with *.conf [Discussion
> concluded more flexibility here would be of limited value relative to
> how it complicates the implementation]
> -Loops over the files found in sorted order by name

> I can see some potential confusion here in one case. Let's say someone
> specifies a full path to their postgresql.conf file. They might assume
> that the includedir was relative to the directory that file is in.
> Let's say configfile is /etc/sysconfig/pgsql/postgresql.conf ; a user
> might think that "includedir conf.d" from there would reference
> /etc/sysconfig/pgsql/conf.d instead of the $PGDATA/conf.d you actually
> get. Wavering on how to handle that is one reason I didn't try
> documenting this yet, the decision I made here may not actually be the
> right one.

Well, the existing include directive works relative to the directory the
including file is in. If includedir works differently from that, that
would be highly confusing.

I would actually just extend "include" to accept wildcards instead of
inventing a slightly new and slightly different mechanism.