Re: [PATCH] pg_upgrade: report the reason for failing to open the cluster version file

Michael Paquier <michael(at)paquier(dot)xyz> writes:
> On Wed, Feb 26, 2020 at 10:06:38AM +0100, Magnus Hagander wrote:
>> +1, seems like that would be a regression in value.

> Having more generic messages is less work for translators, we have
> PG_VERSION in the file name, and that's more complicated to translate
> in both French and Japanese. No idea about other languages.

Just looking at the committed diff, it seems painfully obvious that these
two messages were written by different people who weren't talking to each
other. Why aren't they more alike? Given

pg_fatal("could not open version file \"%s\": %m\n", ver_filename);

(which seems fine to me), I think the second ought to be

pg_fatal("could not parse version file \"%s\"\n", ver_filename);

The wording as it stands:

pg_fatal("could not parse PG_VERSION file from \"%s\"\n", cluster->pgdata);

could be criticized on more grounds than just that it's pointlessly
different from the adjacent message: it doesn't follow the style guideline
about saying what each mentioned object is. You could fix that maybe with
s/from/from directory/, but I think this construction is unfortunate and
overly verbose already.

regards, tom lane