Re: GUC names in messages

Peter Smith <smithpb2250@gmail.com>

From: Peter Smith <smithpb2250@gmail.com>
To: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Cc: Daniel Gustafsson <daniel@yesql.se>, PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>
Date: 2023-11-09T01:55:44Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers

Attachments

On Thu, Nov 2, 2023 at 1:25 AM Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>
...
> Our error message style guidelines say not to assemble messages out
> of separate parts, because it makes translation difficult.  Originally
> we applied that rule to GUC names mentioned in messages as well.
> Awhile ago the translation team decided that that made for too many
> duplicative translations, so they'd be willing to compromise on
> substituting GUC names.  That's only been changed in a haphazard
> fashion though, mostly in cases where there actually were duplicative
> messages that could be merged this way.  And there's never been any
> real clarity about whether to quote GUC names, though certainly we're
> more likely to quote anything injected with %s.  So that's why we have
> a mishmash right now.

Right. While looking at all the messages I observed a number of them
having almost the same (but not quite the same) wording:

For example,

errhint("Consider increasing the configuration parameter \"max_wal_size\".")));
errhint("You might need to increase %s.", "max_locks_per_transaction")));
errhint("You might need to increase %s.", "max_pred_locks_per_transaction")));
errmsg("could not find free replication state, increase
max_replication_slots")));
hint ? errhint("You might need to increase %s.", "max_slot_wal_keep_size") : 0);
errhint("You may need to increase max_worker_processes.")));
errhint("Consider increasing configuration parameter
\"max_worker_processes\".")));
errhint("Consider increasing the configuration parameter
\"max_worker_processes\".")));
errhint("You might need to increase %s.", "max_worker_processes")));
errhint("You may need to increase max_worker_processes.")));
errhint("You might need to increase %s.", "max_logical_replication_workers")));

~

The most common pattern there is "You might need to increase %s.".

Here is a patch to modify those other similar variations so they share
that common wording.

PSA.

======
Kind Regards,
Peter Smith.
Fujitsu Australia

Commits

  1. Apply GUC name from central table in more places of guc.c

  2. Use camel case for "DateStyle" in some error messages

  3. Unify some error messages to ease work of translators

  4. Apply more quoting to GUC names in messages

  5. Revise GUC names quoting in messages again

  6. doc: Mention how to use quotes with GUC names in error messages

  7. Apply quotes more consistently to GUC names in logs