pg_hba.conf pre-parsing change

Bruce Momjian - CVS <momjian@hub.org> writes:
>     Load pg_hba.conf and pg_ident.conf on startup and SIGHUP into List of
>     Lists, and use that for user validation.

While this should be a nice speedup, it bothers me somewhat that the old
behavior of reacting immediately to pg_hba.conf and pg_ident.conf
updates has been changed.  (And you didn't update the documentation to
say so --- tsk tsk.)

Would it make sense to do fstat calls on these files and reload whenever
we observe that the file modification time has changed?  That'd be an
additional kernel call per connection attempt, so I'm not at all sure
I want to do it ... but it ought to be debated.  Comments anyone?
        regards, tom lane