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In the interest of constructive criticism, here's some ways I think postgresql.conf could be improved. * A weak +1 to the #include idea. I'm much more inclined to simply add a new section to the bottom of the file and use version control, but I could see ways in which include would be useful. * Rearrange the settings to put the more "common" ones at the top, even if it means messing up the categories a bit. Having 'bonjour_name' at the top, and 'default_statistics_target' buried way down below is crazy. The sections should be looked at from a clean perspective: do we need them at all? Are their better ways to arrange things? What order should they be in? * Much more verbose comments. The abovementioned default_statistics_target is a very important settings, but there is zero explanation in the file of what it is. The only thing we're told is that it ranges from 10 - 1000. We can do better than that. Users would absolutely love it if each item had a clear explanation, and it would be well worth a slightly increased file size. See the postfix main.cf file for a good example of such. * Remove the confusing "commented out is default" bit entirely. Simply set each value explicitly. Why should new users have to confront this?: # The commented-out settings shown in this file represent the default values. # Re-commenting a setting is NOT sufficient to revert it to the default value; # you need to reload the server. * Lose the tabbed indenting, which looks bad, especially for multi-line comments. Just use spaces. * Create a tool, or at least a best practices, for controlling and tracking changes to the file. * Put some doc URLs in the file, at the minimum per major section. At the very bare minimum, a real URL at the top. * Indicate which values can be changed per-session or per-role. * Fix the disparity between the syntax in the file and the SET interface. For example, work_mem = 16MB works in the conf file, but you have to write SET work_mem = '16MB'. Easiest is probably just to quote everything in the conf. * Lose the post-value, end-of-line comments, they just get in the way when making changes and make the file harder to read by contributing to the wrap problem. * I'm tempted by the argument of creating a separate file for the obscure settings, but I think it would be too much pain, and nobody would ever agree on which settings are 'important' and which are 'obscure'. * It might be nice to mention other ways to reload the file, such as 'service postgresql reload', or whatever Windows uses. * The word 'paramters' is still misspelled. :) * That whole sentence about changing the parameters as command-line options needs to go away. * Since the executable is now named "postgres" (thank goodness we got rid of "postmaster"), the file should be named 'postgres.conf'. This would also be a way to quickly distinguish 'old' vs 'new' style conf files if we end up making major changes to it. - -- Greg Sabino Mullane [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 200805311911 http://biglumber.com/x/web?pk=2529DF6AB8F79407E94445B4BC9B906714964AC8 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iEYEAREDAAYFAkhB39sACgkQvJuQZxSWSshahQCg4V5QsO34HOhUDoPzT7STcR45 V5UAoPQxkmuk/oCYirTKxMAhV+Kh8Ytz =7Lgk -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
