Re: [PATCH] get_home_path: use HOME

Tom Lane wrote:

> If we take this patch, what's to stop someone from complaining that we
> broke *their* badly-designed system that abuses the HOME variable?

POSIX warns against doing that, listing HOME in the variables that
should be left to their intended usage:
http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/

<quote>
If the variables in the following two sections are present in the
environment during the execution of an application or utility, they
shall be given the meaning described below
[...]
HOME
The system shall initialize this variable at the time of login to
be a pathname of the user's home directory. See <pwd.h>.
</quote>

psql is indirectly using $HOME already for readline and terminfo:

$ HOME=/tmp/home2 strace psql 2>tr ; grep home2 tr
...
stat("/tmp/home2/.terminfo", 0x7ff985bf4730) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or
directory)
stat("/tmp/home2/.inputrc", 0x7fff3f641d70) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or
directory)

Also when using Debian's psql, the wrapper looks for it own config file in
$HOME:
open("/tmp/home2/.postgresqlrc", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or
directory)
Being written in Perl, it could use getpwuid(), but it doesn't, like I
believe
the majority of programs that just want the home directory.

+1 on using HOME for being consistent with other pieces of code around
postgres, and for the easiness of locally overriding it when
troubleshooting problems with dot files.

Best regards,
--
Daniel Vérité
PostgreSQL-powered mailer: http://www.manitou-mail.org
Twitter: @DanielVerite