Re: [PATCH] Rename pg_switch_xlog to pg_switch_wal

On Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 2:13 PM, Andres Freund <andres(at)anarazel(dot)de> wrote:
> On 2017-01-26 14:05:43 -0500, Robert Haas wrote:
>> I completely understand that position. I have always been doubtful of
>> the value of renaming pg_xlog to pg_wal, and I'm not any more
>> dedicated to the idea now than I was when I committed that patch. But
>> there was overwhelming support for it, consensus on a level rarely
>> seen here.
>
> I think that consistency was based on the change being a narrow
> proposition, not a license to run around and change a lot of stuff
> including the names of binary.

I'm not so sure about that. There are a lot of people who have
supported the idea of making this consistent on THIS thread. It's not
clear how much of a majority there is, but it's certainly no worse
than 50-50. It's got far more affirmative votes than most patches
that go in though, I will grant, also far more negative votes.

>> I do not think it can be right to rename the directory and not
>> anything else. I stand by what I wrote in
>>
>> https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/CA+TgmobeHP2qbtMvYxG2x8Pm_9utjRya-rom5XL4QuyA26c1Gg@mail.gmail.com
>
> I'm tempted to quote Emerson ;). I don't think the naming of pg_xlog
> vs. pg_wal doesn't actually have that large an impact, to change the
> dynamics of the wal vs xlog dichotomy. Sure it's nothing you'd do in a
> new program, but neither is it very bad.

Gee, I can't imagine what Emerson quote you might be thinking about. :-)

I think it's just never going to work to imagine that we can
indefinitely go on having a pg_resetxlog binary to reset a thing that
is no longer called xlog. Sure, for a few years that will seem like
it makes sense, but if we didn't change it now, eventually there would
be a push to do it later. And if that one gets shut down, there will
eventually be another push. We'll repeatedly relitigate this whole
debate, and maybe eventually the result will be one or two more things
get changed ... and then later we'll do it again for what's left. I
am not entirely excited about the backward-compatibility pain we're
incurring here, but I think if we don't do it all at once it's just
going to get spread out over time. Maybe it in a universe where
PostgreSQL was controlled by a small number of people acting as one
you could hold the line, but in the actual universe people just keep
calling a vote on this sort of thing every two or three until they
win. I don't think there's anything you or I or anyone else can say
or do that will prevent that from happening, so I'd as soon just be
done with it.

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