Re: CREATE TABLE glitch -fix request for 7.2

Josh Berkus wrote:
> Tom, Peter, Stephan, et al.:
>
> Here's a glitch that's bothered me for a while (ver 7.0 -> 7.2b4 ) in
> PostgreSQL DDL statements. I was thinking that since 7.2 is still in beta,
> that you could fix it this version.
>
> To produce the glitch:
> 1. Create a SQL script file that drops a table, then creates that table with a
> SERIAL primary key (I do this all the time to build my databases)
> 2. Run the script once to create the table. You'll get a error (no table to
> drop) but that doesn't matter.
> 3. Run the script a second time, as if you were making changes to the data
> structure and needed to rebuild.
> 4. You will get an error telling you that "table1_id_seq" already exists, and
> the CREATE TABLE statement will fail.
>
> This is very user-unfriendly behaviour, especially in a database that still
> does not support about 50% of ALTER TABLE. I spend a fair amount of extra
> time deleting SERIAL sequences when I am doing the database-building part of
> the development process.
>
> Can we change this behavior, please? I'd suppose that it would require you to
> create some sort of permanent link between SERIAL columns and the sequences
> they spawn.

We need pg_depend table to track dependency of sequence on specific
tables, hopefully in >=7.3.

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