Re: ALTER ROLE documentation improvement

On Fri, Sep 15, 2023 at 11:46:35AM -0700, Yurii Rashkovskii wrote:
> It appears that 16.0 improved some of the checks in ALTER ROLE. Previously,
> it was possible to do the following (assuming current_user is a bootstrap
> user):
>
> ```
> ALTER ROLE current_user NOSUPERUSER
> ```
>
> As of 16.0, this produces an error:
>
> ```
> ERROR: permission denied to alter role
> DETAIL: The bootstrap user must have the SUPERUSER attribute.
> ```
>
> The attached patch documents this behavior by providing a bit more
> clarification to the following statement:
>
> "Database superusers can change any of these settings for any role."

I think this could also be worth a mention in the glossary [0]. BTW the
glossary calls this role the "bootstrap superuser", but the DETAIL message
calls it the "bootstrap user". Perhaps we should standardize on one name.

[0] https://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/glossary.html

--
Nathan Bossart
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