Re: Frontend error logging style

On 27.03.22 22:19, Tom Lane wrote:
> Here's a rebase up to today's HEAD. I've fixed the merge problems,
> but there may be some stray new error calls that could be converted
> to use pg_fatal() and haven't been. I don't want to do a full
> fresh scan of the code until we're about ready to commit this.

This looks like a good improvement to me.

I think I would want the program name/location also in front of the
detail and hint lines. I need to think about this a bit more. This
shouldn't hold up this patch; it would be a quick localized change.
(I'm also thinking about providing a separate color code for the
secondary messages. Again, this could be a quick follow-up patch.)

The one change I didn't like was

- pg_log_error("The program \"%s\" is needed by %s
but was not found in the\n"
- "same directory as
\"%s\".\n"
- "Check your installation.",
+ pg_log_error("the program \"%s\" is needed by %s
but was not found in the same directory as \"%s\"",
"postgres", progname,
full_path);

This appears to prioritize the guideline "don't punctuate error message
as full sentence" over what should be the actual guideline "don't make
the error message a full sentence".

There are other occurrences of a similar message that were not changed
in the same way by the patch. Maybe we should leave this one alone in
this patch and consider rewriting the message instead.