Horton

Re: Renaming of pg_xlog and pg_clog

Christoph Berg <myon@debian.org>

View thread View on postgr.es
From: Christoph Berg <myon@debian.org>
To: Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net>
Cc: Peter Eisentraut <peter.eisentraut@2ndquadrant.com>, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>, Michael Paquier <michael.paquier@gmail.com>, Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>, Thomas Munro <thomas.munro@enterprisedb.com>, Craig Ringer <craig.ringer@2ndquadrant.com>, Jim Nasby <Jim.Nasby@bluetreble.com>, PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>, Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>
Date: 2016-10-14T17:19:02Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers 
Re: Stephen Frost 2016-10-14 <20161014113523.GZ13284@tamriel.snowman.net>
> > We have a tool called pg_xlogdump in the standard installation.  initdb
> > has an option --xlogdir, pg_basebackup has --xlog and others.  Renaming
> > the xlog directory would make this all a bit confusing, unless we're
> > prepared to rename the programs and options as well.
> 
> pg_xlogdump is not a user-facing tool, frankly, so I don't believe we
> should be terribly concerned about either leaving it named as-is or
> renaming it.  I agree that we should consider adding alternative names
> to the options for initdb and pg_basebackup.

There's actually another instance of "rename so people shoot their
feet less often" here: pg_resetxlog, which is a user-facing tool.
Folks on #postgresql have repeatedly been joking that it should rather
be named pg_eatmydata, given the number of "howtos" on the web that
make use of it. Maybe this is the chance to find a less
innocent-sounding name. (Or add a mandatory --rewind-my-data switch.)

Christoph

Commits

  1. Rename "pg_clog" directory to "pg_xact".

  2. Improve error reporting in pg_upgrade's file copying/linking/rewriting.