Re: RFC: programmable file format for postgresql.conf

On 12/4/13, 1:42 AM, Álvaro Hernández Tortosa wrote:
> IMHO, a data structure like the above would be completely
> self-contained and allow any autoconfiguring tool or GUI tool to be
> easily created, if the syntax is programmable. It would certainly make
> the config file more verbose, but at the same time would help a lot of
> users to configure postgres providing much more information.

What you are describing appears to be isomorphic to XML and XML Schema.
Note that you are not required to maintain your configuration data in a
postgresql.conf-formatted file. You can keep it anywhere you like, GUI
around in it, and convert it back to the required format. Most of the
metadata is available through postgres --describe-config, which is the
result of a previous attempt in this area, which never really went anywhere.

It's not like there are a bunch of GUI and autotuning tools that people
are dying to use or developers are dying to create, but couldn't because
editing configuration files programmatically is hard.

Let's also not forget the two main use cases (arguably) of the
configuration files: hand editing, and generation by configuration
management tools. Anything that makes these two harder is not going to
be well-received.