Re: Improving postgresql.conf

Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> writes:

> The only real problem I see is that showing all the values as comments
> encourages the idea that you can undo a change by undoing your edit.
> The simple and obvious fix is to not show the values as comments ...

Well even if you don't show them (and it would be most frustrating for users
if you don't) it's certainly expected that commenting something out returns it
to the default value. It's how just about every other piece of software works.
I can lend my own experience as one data point that I was totally surprised
when I found out it didn't work the way I expected.

Note that the current situation means that the same config file means two
different things for initial startup vs reload. I can have a config file that
works fine for months through several reloads, but then be puzzled why my
database doesn't work the same way when i restart the machine and try to start
postgres up... That makes it impossible to test config settings properly
without stopping and restarting the database.

The current situation is that reload isn't really reloading the config file,
it's loading new settings from a file. That's a useful feature but I'm not
convinced it's really all that necessary since you can always load settings
from a command line and it's not hard to load several of them.

Most of the time you use a config file you want to load a consistent set of
settings and the best way to do that is to start from scratch and load the
complete set. Not merge them with whatever settings are in place already.

--
greg