Re: Hard limit on WAL space used (because PANIC sucks)

>> The archive command can be made a shell script (or that matter a
>> compiled program) which can do anything it wants upon failure, including
>> emailing people.

You're talking about using external tools -- frequently hackish,
workaround ones -- to handle something which PostgreSQL should be doing
itself, and which only the database engine has full knowledge of.  

While
that's the only solution we have for now, it's hardly a worthy design goal.

Right now, what we're telling users is "You can have continuous backup
with Postgres, but you'd better hire and expensive consultant to set it
up for you, or use this external tool of dubious provenance which
there's no packages for, or you might accidentally cause your database
to shut down in the middle of the night."

At which point most sensible users say "no thanks, I'll use something else".