Re: pg14 psql broke \d datname.nspname.relname

On Tue, Oct 12, 2021 at 7:41 AM Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> Oh, give me a break. The previous behavior obviously hasn't been
> tested either, and is broken on its face. If someone *had* complained
> about it, I imagine you would have promptly fixed it and likely
> back-patched the fix, probably in under 24 hours from the time of the
> report.

You're asking us to imagine a counterfactual. But this counterfactual
bug report would have to describe a real practical problem. The
details would matter. It's reasonable to suppose that we haven't seen
such a bug report for a reason.

I can't speak for Tom. My position on this is that it's better to
leave it alone at this time, given the history, and the lack of
complaints from users.

> I find it difficult to take seriously the contention that
> anyone is expecting \d dlsgjdsghj.sdhg.l.dsg.jkhsdg.foo.bar to work
> like \d foo.bar, or that they would even prefer that behavior over an
> error message. You're carefully avoiding addressing that question in
> favor of having a discussion of backward compatibility, but a better
> term for what we're talking about here would be bug-compatibility.

Let's assume that it is bug compatibility. Is that intrinsically a bad thing?

--
Peter Geoghegan