Re: PATCH: psql tab completion for SELECT

Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>

From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Edmund Horner <ejrh00@gmail.com>
Cc: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>, pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org, pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Date: 2018-01-18T00:07:18Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers
Edmund Horner <ejrh00@gmail.com> writes:
> On 15 January 2018 at 15:45, Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de> wrote:
>> All worries like this are supposed to check the server version.

> In psql there are around 200 such tab completion queries, none of
> which checks the server version.  Many would cause the user's
> transaction to abort if invoked on an older server.  Identifying the
> appropriate server versions for each one would be quite a bit of work.

> Is there a better way to make this more robust?

Maybe it'd be worth the effort to wrap tab completion queries in
SAVEPOINT/RELEASE SAVEPOINT if we're inside a user transaction
(which we could detect from libpq's state, I believe).

That seems like an independent patch, but it'd be a prerequisite
if you want to issue tab completion queries with version dependencies.

A bigger point here is: do you really want SELECT tab completion
to work only against the latest and greatest server version?
That would become an argument against committing the feature at all;
maybe not enough to tip the scales against it, but still a demerit.

			regards, tom lane


Commits

  1. In psql, restore old behavior of Query_for_list_of_functions.

  2. Add infrastructure to support server-version-dependent tab completion.