Re: Bug with pg_ctl -w/wait and config-only directories

On 10/03/2011 04:41 PM, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> On mån, 2011-10-03 at 15:09 -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
>> Why were people not using pg_ctl?  Because of the limitations which
>> were fixed in PG 9.1?  As Dave already said, windows already has to
>> use pg_ctl.
> Historically, pg_ctl has had a lot of limitations.  Just off the top of
> my head, nonstandard ports used to break it, nonstandard socket
> directories used to break it, nonstandard authentication setups used to
> break it, the waiting business was unreliable, the stop modes were weird
> and not flexible enough, the behavior in error cases does not conform to
> LSB init script conventions, there were some race conditions that I
> don't recall the details of right now.  And you had to keep a list of
> exactly which of these bugs were addressed in which version.


I'm not sure ancient history helps us much here.  Many of these went 
away long ago.


> Basically, pg_ctl is a neat convenience for interactive use for people
> who don't want to write advanced shell constructs, but for writing a
> robust init script, you can and should do better.  For me personally,
> pg_ctl is somewhere between a toy, and annoyance, and a dangerous
> instrument.
>
> Obviously, pg_ctl is now a lot better than when it was started, but
> that's the reason why it is not used in certain places.
>
>

Our job should be to make it better.

cheers

andrew