Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> writes:
> Config-only directories seem to be only adding confusion. All possible
> solutions seem to be adding more code and user requirements, which the
> creation of symlinks avoids.
> Is it time for me to ask on 'general' if removal of this feature is
> warranted?
Well, the way we could fix it is to invent the parse-the-config-files
option that was alluded to recently. Then pg_ctl would continue to
take the -D switch or PGDATA environment variable with the same meaning
that the postmaster attaches to it, and would do something like
postgres --print-config-value=data_directory -D $PGDATA
to extract the actual location of the data directory.
Whether this is worth the trouble is highly debatable IMO. One obvious
risk factor for pg_ctl stop/restart is that the current contents of
postgresql.conf might not match what they were when the postmaster was
started.
I was never exactly thrilled with the separate-config-directory design
to start with, so I'm probably not the person to opine on whether we
could get away with removing it.
regards, tom lane