On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 9:36 PM, Josh Kupershmidt <schmi...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 10:26 AM, Robert Haas <robertmh...@gmail.com> wrote: >> At the risk of opening a can of worms, if we're going to fix \dd, >> shouldn't we fix it completely, and include comments on ALL the object >> types that can have them? IIRC it's missing a bunch, not just >> constraints. > > You opened this can up, so I hope you like worms ;-) Let's break down > the objects that the COMMENT docs say one can comment on. [Disclaimer: > It's likely I've made some mistakes in this list, data was gleaned > mostly from perusing describe.c] > > 1.) Comments displayed by \dd: > > TABLE > AGGREGATE > OPERATOR > RULE > FUNCTION > INDEX > SEQUENCE > TRIGGER > TYPE > VIEW > > 2.) Comments displayed in the backslash commands for the object: > > AGGREGATE \da > COLUMN \d+ tablename > COLLATION \dO > DATABASE \l+ > EXTENSION \dx > FUNCTION \df+ > FOREIGN TABLE \d+ tablename (I think?) > LARGE OBJECT \dl > ROLE \dg+ > SCHEMA \dn+ > TABLESPACE \db+ > TYPE \dT > TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION \dF > TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY \dFd > TEXT SEARCH PARSER \dFp > TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE \dFt > > 3.) Objects for which we don't display the comments anywhere: > CAST > CONSTRAINT (addressed by this patch) > CONVERSION > DOMAIN > PROCEDURAL LANGUAGE > > 4.) My eyes are starting to glaze over, and I'm too lazy to figure out > how or if comments for these objects are handled: > FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER > OPERATOR CLASS > OPERATOR FAMILY > SERVER > >> Another thought is that I wonder if it's really useful to have a >> backslash commands that dumps out comments on many different object >> types. > > ISTM that \dd is best suited as a command to show the comments for > objects for which we don't have an individual backslash command, or > objects for which it's not practical to show the comment in the > backslash command. > >> In some cases, e.g. \db+, we include the description for the >> object in the output of the backslash command that lists objects just >> of that type, which seems like a better design. > > I agree that's the way to go for objects where such display is > feasible (the backslash command produces columnar output, and we can > just stick in a "comment" column). > > I wouldn't want to try to pollute, say, \d+ with comments about > tables, rules, triggers, etc. But for the few objects displayed by > both \dd and the object's respective backslash command (aggregates, > types, and functions), I would be in favor of ripping out the \dd > display. > >> Of course we have no >> backslash command for constraints anyway.... > > Precisely, and I think there's a solid argument for putting > constraints into bucket 1 above, as this patch does, since there's no > good room to display constraint comments inside \d+, and there's no > backslash command specifically for constraints. > > I was kind of hoping to avoid dealing with this can of worms with this > simple patch, which by itself seems uncontroversial. If there's > consensus that \dd and the other backslash commands need further > reworking, I can probably devote a little more time to this. But let's > not have the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Patch applies clean, does what it is supposed to do, and matches other conventions in describe.c Passing to committer. pg_comments may be a better way to go, but that is a problem for another day... merlin -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
