Re: remove separate postgres.(sh)description files

Heikki Linnakangas <hlinnaka@iki.fi>

From: Heikki Linnakangas <hlinnaka@iki.fi>
To: John Naylor <john.naylor@2ndquadrant.com>
Cc: PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>
Date: 2020-01-08T12:33:23Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers
On 31/12/2019 02:08, John Naylor wrote:
> I'm guessing the initial data for pg_(sh)description is output into
> separate files because it was too difficult for the traditional shell
> script to maintain enough state to do otherwise.

Yeah, I guess so. The roots of postgres.description goes all the way 
back to 1997, when not only genbki was a shell script, but also initdb.

> With Perl, it's just as easy to assemble the data into the same
> format as the rest of the catalogs and then let the generic code path
> output it into postgres.bki. The attached patch does that and
> simplifies the catalog makefile and initdb.c.
Nice cleanup! Looks like we didn't have any mention of the 
postgres.(sh)decription files in the docs, so no doc updates needed. 
Grepping around, there are a few stray references to 
postgres.description still:

$ git grep -r -I postgres.shdescript .
src/backend/catalog/.gitignore:/postgres.shdescription
src/backend/catalog/Makefile:# postgres.bki, postgres.description, 
postgres.shdescription,
src/tools/msvc/clean.bat:if %DIST%==1 if exist 
src\backend\catalog\postgres.shdescription del /q 
src\backend\catalog\postgres.shdescription

Barring objections, I'll remove those too, and commit this.

- Heikki



Commits

  1. Remove separate files for the initial contents of pg_(sh)description