Re: ALTER TABLE with TYPE serial does not work

On Sat, Jan 31, 2009 at 9:04 PM, Richard Broersma
<richard(dot)broersma(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 31, 2009 at 3:16 PM, Andreas Wenk
> <a(dot)wenk(at)netzmeister-st-pauli(dot)de> wrote:
>
>> Why does this not work:
>>
>> postgres=# ALTER TABLE tab1 ALTER COLUMN nr TYPE serial;
>> ERROR: type "serial" does not exist
>
> serial is really just "short-hand" for making an integer column use
> default incrementing function. The following will fully explain what
> it is so that you can alter the column:
> http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/interactive/datatype-numeric.html#DATATYPE-SERIAL

Seeing as it works with adding a column, and I've seen instructions
for creating a sequence, and then adding a dependency into the system
tables, it's quite reasonable to expect that one day it will work with
alter table alter column. But it's probably more complicated than
just making it a serial type, there's probably some question of
setting the sequence according to the max value in the table. I'd be
surprised if it's not on the TODO list somewhere.