Re: Updated macOS start scripts

> On Nov 15, 2017, at 12:02 PM, Mark Dilger <hornschnorter(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>
>
>> On Nov 15, 2017, at 11:00 AM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
>>
>> Mark Dilger <hornschnorter(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
>>>> On Nov 15, 2017, at 8:32 AM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
>>>> The stuff in contrib/start-scripts/osx/ does not, as far as I know,
>>>> work at all on any recent release of macOS, because SystemStarter
>>>> is long gone. I propose replacing it with the attached, which
>>>> I've tested on current-vintage Macs.
>>
>>> Overall, I think supporting 10.10 and greater is more relevant than continuing
>>> to support 10.4 and earlier, though I suppose someone could argue for
>>> keeping both in side-by-side files with the README directing users which to
>>> use for whichever version of OS X they happen to be running. It's of no
>>> consequence to me, since my oldest mac is running 10.6.8, but somebody
>>> from the museum of old macs might feel differently.
>>
>> Well, we have no buildfarm coverage before 10.4, so to my mind those
>> releases are desupported already. In practice I wonder whether anyone
>> is really running PG on such old releases anyway. Certainly I wouldn't
>> think they'd be making new PG installations on machines that old.
>
> I have tested this on 10.11.6. I had no trouble following the instructions
> in the README and everything worked as described.
>
> As far as I can tell, this patch has not yet been submitted to any commitfest.
> I would mark it Read for Committer.

Upon further review, I have noticed that `pg_ctl stop` does not work once
the org.postgresql.postgres service has been started. I was trying to stop,
reinstall and re-initdb and restart postgres and this service was a pita. I had
to go back to your osx.patch to remind myself what I had done and only then
could I stop the service and continue my work.

Is there any way this patch could be improved to work nicely with pg_ctl? It
seems that `pg_ctl stop` indeed stops the postgres process, but the system
launches a new one so quickly that pg_ctl thinks the service has not stopped,
and it just waits forever (or until it times out, depending on your settings).

If nothing else, the instructions in the patch about how to turn this feature on
should have big warning flags about how pg_ctl won't work once you do this.

mark