Alvaro Herrera <alvhe...@2ndquadrant.com> writes: > Crazy idea: we could just have a CSV file which can be loaded into a > table for mass changes using regular DDL commands, then dumped back from > there into the file. We already know how to do these things, using > \copy etc. Since CSV uses one line per entry, there would be no merge > problems either (or rather: all merge problems would become conflicts, > which is what we want.)
That's an interesting proposal. It would mean that the catalog files stay at more or less their current semantic level (direct representations of bootstrap catalog contents), but it does sound like a more attractive way to perform complex edits than writing Emacs macros ;-). You could actually do that the hard way right now, with a bit of script to convert between DATA lines and CSV format. But if we anticipate that becoming the standard approach, it would definitely make sense to migrate the master copies into CSV or traditional COPY format, and teach BKI mode to read that (or, perhaps, leave bootstrap.c alone and modify the code that produces the .bki file). This is somewhat orthogonal to the question of whether we want to do things like converting noncritical operator-class definitions into regular CREATE OPERATOR CLASS syntax. There's almost certainly going to be some hard core of catalog entries that aren't amenable to that, and will still need to be loaded from data files of some sort. regards, tom lane -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers