Lamar Owen <lamar.owen@wgcr.org> writes:
> Having said all that, I still believe that this is something tailor-made for
> postgresql.conf.
Well, exactly. Regardless of how serious you may think the security
argument is, it still remains that a config-file entry seems the ideal
way to do it. I can't see any good argument in favor of relying on
environment variables instead. They don't bring any new functionality
to the party; and we have an awful lot of work invested in putting all
sorts of functionality into the GUC module. I think that doing
configuration-like stuff outside the GUC framework is now something that
we should resist --- or at least have a darn good reason for it when we
do it.
regards, tom lane