Re: Parsing config files in a directory

On Sat, Oct 24, 2009 at 9:41 AM, Magnus Hagander <magnus(at)hagander(dot)net> wrote:
> Per discussion at the developer meeting back in Ottawa, attached is an
> initial patch that implements reading a directory of configuration
> files instead of just one. The idea being that something like a tuning
> tool, or pgadmin, for example can drop and modify files in this
> directory instead of modifying the main config file (which can be very
> hard to machine-parse).

The solution to the problem mentioned parenthetically here is

> $PGDATA/postgresql.conf

And no matter how much anyone cares to protest, that is the ONLY real
solution to the problem of postgresql.conf being hard to parse until
we have software that can pass the Turing test. At the aforementioned
developer meeting, or anyway sometime at PGcon, there was some
discussion of the following variant, which would also work:

echo "# 'man postgresql.conf' for information about the contents of
this file" > $PGDATA/postgresql.conf

Supporting an include-directory seems harmless to me, and even
potentially useful. But the only way to solve the problem of
machine-parsing the config file is to remove the instructions (which
can only EVER be parsed by human beings) and put them somewhere else.

To reiterate, I have no problem with the proposal (I have not examined
the code), but I respectfully submit that it's not solving the problem
you think it's solving.

...Robert