Re: Renaming of pg_xlog and pg_clog

* Christoph Berg (myon(at)debian(dot)org) wrote:
> Re: Stephen Frost 2016-10-14 <20161014113523(dot)GZ13284(at)tamriel(dot)snowman(dot)net>
> > > We have a tool called pg_xlogdump in the standard installation. initdb
> > > has an option --xlogdir, pg_basebackup has --xlog and others. Renaming
> > > the xlog directory would make this all a bit confusing, unless we're
> > > prepared to rename the programs and options as well.
> >
> > pg_xlogdump is not a user-facing tool, frankly, so I don't believe we
> > should be terribly concerned about either leaving it named as-is or
> > renaming it. I agree that we should consider adding alternative names
> > to the options for initdb and pg_basebackup.
>
> There's actually another instance of "rename so people shoot their
> feet less often" here: pg_resetxlog, which is a user-facing tool.

That is *not* a user-facing tool.

> Folks on #postgresql have repeatedly been joking that it should rather
> be named pg_eatmydata, given the number of "howtos" on the web that
> make use of it. Maybe this is the chance to find a less
> innocent-sounding name. (Or add a mandatory --rewind-my-data switch.)

Not sure on the best approach here, but I agree that it's a problem that
people think pg_resetxlog is some kind of recovery tool (hint: it's
not).

Thanks!

Stephen