Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net> writes:
> I'd been puzzling over how to deal with this big list of fields in
> postgresql.conf and I do like the idea of some kind of short-cut being
> provided to ease the pain for users.
Yeah, I agree with the worry that a default value that's a mile long
is going to be a bit of a PITA. But I don't think we're there yet on
having a better solution.
> What about something other than
> version_x_y? I could maybe see having a 'default' and an 'all'
> instead.. Then have the default be what we have currently and 'all' be
> the full list I'm thinking about.
If "default" always means what it means today, I can live with that.
But if the meaning of "all" changes from version to version, that seems
like a royal mess. Again, I'm concerned that an external tool like
pgfouine be able to make sense of the value without too much context.
If it doesn't know what some of the columns are, it can just ignore them
--- but a magic summary identifier that it doesn't understand at all is
a problem.
regards, tom lane