Jim Nasby <Jim.Nasby@BlueTreble.com> writes:
> On 6/19/15 10:35 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
>> On the other hand, you could argue that improving the string is going
>> to break clients that do the right thing (even if klugily) in order
>> to help clients that are doing the wrong thing (ie, failing without
>> offering the opportunity to enter a password). Ideally no client app
>> would ever show this message to users and so its readability would not
>> matter.
> Could we return a HINT? Or is that part of the same string?
Unfortunately no, there's no out-of-band additions possible here.
It strikes me that my argument above is too myopic, because I was only
thinking about cases where the client can plausibly do an interactive
prompt for password. If it cannot (eg, psql --no-password, or perhaps
the process has no controlling terminal) then what you're going to see
is whatever message libpq returns. So if people feel that this message
is not clear enough, maybe it's time to break compatibility and change it.
I do not follow Craig's argument that this is somehow connected to the
wire protocol version. It's not; it's part of the libpq-to-client API.
If there ever is a protocol version 4, it will almost certainly not
trigger significant changes in that API --- there might be additions,
but not incompatible changes. So if we think we can't change that
message now, then face it, we never will.
regards, tom lane