Re: Parsing config files in a directory

On Sat, 2009-10-24 at 15:41 +0200, Magnus Hagander wrote:

> Per discussion at the developer meeting back in Ottawa, attached is an
> initial patch that implements reading a directory of configuration
> files instead of just one. The idea being that something like a tuning
> tool, or pgadmin, for example can drop and modify files in this
> directory instead of modifying the main config file (which can be very
> hard to machine-parse). The idea is the same as other software like
> apache that parses multiple files.
> 
> Files are parsed in alphabetical order so it's predictable, and you
> can make sure some files override others etc.
> 
> Comments, before I go do the final polishing? :-)

I really don't like this at all. It seems like too much change. The
whole world knows about postgresql.conf, lets not change that. 

I'm happy with the new feature, however, so is there a way to do this?

Could we have a new directive in postgresql.conf that allows you to
specify an includedirectory? Like an include directive but for a whole
directory rather than just a file. Users would then also be able to
specify more than one directory, if required. This way we would allow
people to have the multi-conf file feature but without changing existing
ways of working. By default, we would have one entry at the bottom of
postgresql.conf which would point to pg_conf, a new directory that
starts off empty. So by default, nothing has changed, yet the new
feature is allowed.

-- Simon Riggs           www.2ndQuadrant.com