Re: libpq host/hostaddr/conninfo inconsistencies

On Thu, Feb 21, 2019 at 10:57 AM Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> True, but isn't that because we fail to document at all that you
> can put an IP address in "host"? Which your proposed patch didn't
> change, IIRC.

Well, that's another way to tackle the problem. Personally, I see
pretty much no downside in approaching this by encouraging people to
use only 'host' in normal cases and adding 'hostaddr' as an additional
field only when necessary, so that's the approach I took. Now you
seem to think that it's important for people to know that they could
use 'hostaddr' without specifying 'host', but I think that's a detail
that nobody really needs to know. I'm looking for a way to give
people a clearer suggestion that they should just use 'host' and
forget the rest. Perhaps we could get there via what you propose
here, namely documenting that 'host' can be either a name or an IP
address, but I'm worried that it won't come through clearly enough and
that people will still get confused.

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company