On Wed, 2003-02-12 at 08:24, Kevin Brown wrote: > Tom Lane wrote: > > You can only justify it as simpler if you propose hardwiring a value > > for $SOMECONFIGDIRECTORY ... > > Making things simpler from the standpoint of the code isn't the point. > Making things simpler for the DBA and/or Unix sysadmin is. > > I'd say $SOMECONFIGDIRECTORY should be a hardwired default with a > command line override. > > I doubt you'll get a whole lot of argument from the general user > community if you say that the hard wired default should be > /etc/postgresql. > > > which is a proposal that will not fly with any of the core > > developers, because we all run multiple versions of Postgres on our > > machines so that we can deal with back-version bug reports, test > > installations, etc. > > I absolutely agree that the config directory to use should be > something that can be controlled with a command line option. > > > It is unlikely to fly with any of the RPM packagers either, due to > > the wildly varying ideas out there about the One True Place where > > applications should put their config files. > > There seems to be substantial agreement among the distribution > maintainers that config files belong somewhere in /etc. At least, > I've seen very little disagreement with that idea except from people > who believe that each package should have its own, separate directory > hierarchy. And the fact that the vast majority of packages put their > config files somewhere in /etc supports this. > > Debian, for instance, actually *does* put the PostgreSQL config files > in /etc/postgresql and creates symlinks in the data directory that > point to them. This works, but it's a kludge. >
Seems like a good compromise would be to make the hard wired default $SOMECONFIGDIRECTORY be $PGDATA; this makes each version of the software more self contained/ less likely to interfere with another installation. (This becomes really handy when doing major upgrades). If you really have a strong desire to change this, you can. As I see it, this change would (should?) need to be something that could be changed in the configure script when building postgresql, as well changeable via a command line option, any other places? Robert Treat ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 3: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
