Re: Show encoding in initdb messages

Christopher Kings-Lynne <chriskl(at)familyhealth(dot)com(dot)au> writes:
>>> This should save a lot of support requests, hopefully.
>>
>> I kinda doubt it will save any :-(. In what situation would this not
>> merely be echoing back what the guy had just specifically typed on the
>> command line?

> When no -E argument is supplied at all, or when they type ISO-8859-1
> instead of LATIN1.

When no -E is supplied, we always default to SQL_ASCII; there's no
possibility of adopting a value from the environment. The reason that
the locale printout exists is that the command line doesn't completely
specify what locale will be used. That reason doesn't apply to encoding.

> The reason it will help with support is because newbies will go
> "SQL_ASCII! I don't want ascii!".

No they won't. They will likely not even notice this message in the sea
of other messages they've never seen before; and even if they do notice
it, they will certainly not realize that they don't want it. If the
message were to *say* "this is probably a bad choice because it's
incompatible with your locale selection", then it might possibly have
the effect you're hoping for, but I don't see how we can find that out.

> Either way, I see no reason _not_ to just do it...

We could make initdb print out every other setting it has too, but that
would not improve its user interface. Adding messages that don't carry
useful content just debases the importance of each one.

regards, tom lane