Re: Postgres and --config-file option

Aleksander Alekseev <aleksander@timescale.com>

From: Aleksander Alekseev <aleksander@timescale.com>
To: PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>
Cc: Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com>, "David G. Johnston" <david.g.johnston@gmail.com>
Date: 2024-01-15T11:35:27Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers

Attachments

Hi,

> It might be worthwhile to update the documentation if it would've helped
> prevent confusion here.

> Its documentation also describes this method of specifying parameters in
> the 'Examples' section.

I believe the documentation for 'postgres' already does a decent job
in describing what --NAME=VALUE means, and gives an example. IMO the
actual problem is with --help message and the specific error message.

> Please read the documentation for the complete list of run-time
> configuration settings and how to set them on the command line or in
> the configuration file

Additionally --help message doesn't tell which part of the
documentation should be read specifically. This being said, personally
I don't think that providing specific URLs in the --help message would
be a good idea. This would indicate that the --help message is just
written poorly.

> As for the help message, I’d minimally add:
>
> “You must specify the --config-file (or equivalent -c) or -D invocation …”

Good idea.

PFA the patch. It's short but I think it mitigates the problem.

-- 
Best regards,
Aleksander Alekseev

Commits

  1. doc: Mention more variant --name=value of -c name=value for postgres