Re: Hot Standby Feedback should default to on in 9.3+

Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> While we're talking about changing defaults, how about changing the
> default value of the recovery.conf parameter 'standby_mode' to on?
> Not sure about anybody else, but I never want it any other way.

Dunno, it's been only a couple of days since there was a thread about
somebody who had turned it on and not gotten the results he wanted
(because he was only trying to do a point-in-time recovery not create
a standby). There's enough other configuration needed to set up a
standby node that I'm not sure flipping this default helps the case
much.

But having said that, would it be practical to get rid of the explicit
standby_mode parameter altogether? I'm thinking we could assume standby
mode is wanted if primary_conninfo has a nonempty value.

There remains the case of a standby being fed solely from WAL archive
without primary_conninfo, but that's a pretty darn corner-y corner case,
and I doubt it has to be easy to set up. One possibility for it is to
allow primary_conninfo to be set to "none", which would still trigger
standby mode but could be coded to not enable connection attempts.

Mind you, I'm not sure that such a design is easier to understand or
document. But it would be one less parameter.

regards, tom lane