Re: Counting distinct names

Tom Lane writes:

> *Should* there be a default location established by configure?

Not IMO. Firstly (broken record time), configure should not be used to set
run-time options period. (And there's a single good reason for that: when
users build a package they won't know what options they need later on. I
get really annoyed at packages that do that.) Secondly, this will lead to
all kinds of funny problem reports because everyone will have a different
default. Worse yet, people might not even know what their default is
because they use a binary package. I think the current setup is the
cleanest by far because it emphasizes the independence of the data storage
location and the fact that multiple locations are equally valid.

> I think I'd prefer that to having the dependence on an environment var

Environment variables are a common way of pointing programs to their data.
Personally, I rarely bother with it and start the postmaster with -D
instead, then I know what I'm getting. I suppose there's no reason that
users couldn't do the same. The environment variable is only wildly useful
if people start and stop the server all the time.

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Peter Eisentraut Sernanders väg 10:115
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