Re: PostgreSQL pollutes the file system

Julien Rouhaud <rjuju123(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> On Wed, Mar 20, 2019 at 6:25 PM Euler Taveira <euler(at)timbira(dot)com(dot)br> wrote:
>> createdb, dropdb, createuser, dropuser, reindexdb are binaries that
>> confuse most newbies. Which tool is theses binaries from? The names
>> does not give a hint. How often those confusing name tools are used?

> initdb is probably an order of magnitude worse name than all of these.

Meh. The ones with "db" in the name don't strike me as mortal sins;
even if you don't recognize them as referring to a "database", you're
not likely to guess wrongly that you know what they do. The two that
seem the worst to me are createuser and dropuser, which not only have
no visible connection to "postgres" or "database" but could easily
be mistaken for utilities for managing operating-system accounts.

We managed to get rid of createlang and droplang in v10, and there
hasn't been that much push-back about it. So maybe there could be
a move to remove createuser/dropuser? Or at least rename them to
pg_createuser and pg_dropuser. But I think this was discussed
(again) during the v10 cycle, and we couldn't agree to do more than
get rid of createlang/droplang.

regards, tom lane