I think the idea that we should consider a different way of handling
tabular configuration data has merit. In fact, how much sense does it
make to have these options (the ones for which this patch is being
written) be GUCs in the first place? ALTER USER/DATABASE don't work for
them, they can't be usefully changed in the commandline, there's no
working SET.
If we had some way to plug these into pg_hba.conf parsing machinery
(which is tabular data), I would suggest that. But that doesn't sound
really sensible. I think the idea of putting this configuratio data
in a separate file, and perhaps a more convenient format than
three-level GUC options, should be considered.
--
Álvaro Herrera http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training & Services