Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog@svana.org> writes:
> FWIW, I prefer the Debian location. AFAICS the only rationale for
> putting it in /tmp is "because it's always been there".
Actually, it's "because it's certain to be there and be accessible to
unprivileged users". If we tried to change to something like
/var/postgresql, then getting that directory made and properly
permissioned would be an additional installation-time stumbling block
in the way of newbies. That's not an issue for prepackaged builds that
(at some level) require root privs to install, but I don't foresee it
becoming the default for builds from source. Especially not given the
client/server compatibility problems it'd create.
regards, tom lane