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Re: improving user.c error messages

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

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From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com>
Cc: Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>, "pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org" <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Date: 2023-01-26T01:45:22Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers 
Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com> writes:
> On Thu, Jan 19, 2023 at 10:20:33AM -0500, Robert Haas wrote:
>> That would be great. I agree that it's good to try to improve the
>> error messages. It hasn't been entirely clear to me how to do that.
>> For instance, I don't think we want to say something like:
>> 
>> ERROR: must have CREATEROLE privilege and ADMIN OPTION on the target
>> role, or in lieu of both of those to be superuser, to set the
>> CONNECTION LIMIT for another role
>> ERROR: must have CREATEROLE privilege and ADMIN OPTION on the target
>> role, plus also CREATEDB, or in lieu of all that to be superuser, to
>> remove the CREATEDB property from another role

> Here is an early draft of some modest improvements to the user.c error
> messages.  I basically just tried to standardize the style of and add
> context to the existing error messages.  I used errhint() for this extra
> context, but errdetail() would work, too.

Yeah, I think the right fix is to keep the primary message pretty terse
and add detail in secondary messages.  IMO most of these are errdetail not
errhint, because they are factual details about the rules [1].  But other
than that quibble, Nathan's draft looked pretty good in a quick once-over.

			regards, tom lane

[1] https://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/error-style-guide.html

Commits

Same data as JSON: GET /api/v1/messages/:b64id/commits the thread's linked commits as JSON, with link sources. API reference →

  1. Improve several permission-related error messages.

  2. Integrate superuser check into has_rolreplication()

  3. Small code simplification

  4. Adjust interaction of CREATEROLE with role properties.

  5. Add new GUC reserved_connections.

  6. Rename ReservedBackends variable to SuperuserReservedConnections.

  7. Update docs and error message for superuser_reserved_connections.

  8. Add new GUC createrole_self_grant.

  9. Restrict the privileges of CREATEROLE users.

  10. Add a SET option to the GRANT command.