I have been wondering if moving to XML for config files might be a good idea - and if there are going to be GUIs that write them that gives some more impetus to the idea.
The point was to allow a GUI utility to be built that would help in editing postgresql.conf. It couldn't assume the postmaster is already running, so just extending the pg_config view wouldn't answer, and duplicating knowledge of all the GUC variables in a separate tool would have created maintenance headaches. I would like to think that the patch would eventually allow us to generate postgresql.conf.sample automatically from the guc.c tables, and thereby reduce the number of files to maintain, but that didn't get done yet. The reason for having both "long" and "short" descriptions of the variables was that I foresaw the "short" versions as becoming the per-line comments in postgresql.conf. The "long" descriptions were what the GUI tool wants.
This occurred to me as I was writing the token replacement stuff for initdb.c, and I realised how fragile it was - a misplaced space and you are hosed.
Or would it be overkill?
cheers
andrew
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