Re: role self-revocation

Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> Hmm. I think the real issue is what David Johnson calls the session
> user exception. I hadn't quite understood how that played into this.
> According to the documentation: "If WITH ADMIN OPTION is specified,
> the member can in turn grant membership in the role to others, and
> revoke membership in the role as well. Without the admin option,
> ordinary users cannot do that. A role is not considered to hold WITH
> ADMIN OPTION on itself, but it may grant or revoke membership in
> itself from a database session where the session user matches the
> role."

> Is there some use case for the behavior described in that last
> sentence?

Good question. You might try figuring out when that text was added
and then see if there's relevant discussion in the archives.

Just looking at it now, without having done any historical research,
I wonder why it is that we don't attach significance to WITH ADMIN
OPTION being granted to the role itself. It seems like the second
part of that sentence is effectively saying that a role DOES have
admin option on itself, contradicting the first part.

regards, tom lane