Re: Postgres and --config-file option

On Wed, May 15, 2024 at 2:49 AM Peter Eisentraut <peter(at)eisentraut(dot)org>
wrote:

> On 15.05.24 04:07, Michael Paquier wrote:
> > Not sure that these additions in --help or the docs are necessary.
> > The rest looks OK.
> >
> > - "You must specify the --config-file or -D invocation "
> > + "You must specify the --config-file (or equivalent -c) or -D
> invocation "
> >
> > How about "You must specify the --config-file, -c
> > \"config_file=VALUE\" or -D invocation"? There is some practice for
> > --opt=VALUE in .po files.
>
> Yeah, some of this is becoming quite unwieldy, if we document and
> mention each spelling variant of each option everywhere.
>

Where else would this need to be added that was missed? Largely we don't
discuss how to bring a setting into effect - rather there is a single
reference area that discusses how, and everywhere else just assumes you
have read it and goes on to name the setting. On this grounds the
proper fix here is probably to not put the how into the message:

"You must specify the config_file option, the -D argument, or the PGDATA
environment variable."

And this is only unwieldy because while -D and --config-file both can get
to the same result they are not substitutes for each other. Namely if the
configuration file is not in the data directory, as is the case on Debian,
the choice to use -D is not going to work.

This isn't an error message, I'm not all that worried if we output a wall
of text in lieu of pointing the user to the reference page.

> Maybe if the original problem is that the option --config-file is not
> explicitly in the --help output, let's add it to the --help output?
>
>
I'm not opposed to this. Though maybe it is sufficient to do:

--NAME=VALUE (e.g., --config-file='...')

I would do this in addition to removing the explicit how of setting
config_file above.

We also don't mention environment variables in the help but that message
refers to PGDATA...so the complaint and fix if done on that basis seems a
bit selective.

David J.