The previous functions of assign hooks are now split between check hooks
and assign hooks, where the former can fail but the latter shouldn't.
Aside from being conceptually clearer, this approach exposes the
"canonicalized" form of the variable value to guc.c without having to do
an actual assignment. And that lets us fix the problem recently noted by
Bernd Helmle that the auto-tune patch for wal_buffers resulted in bogus
log messages about "parameter "wal_buffers" cannot be changed without
restarting the server". There may be some speed advantage too, because
this design lets hook functions avoid re-parsing variable values when
restoring a previous state after a rollback (they can store a pre-parsed
representation of the value instead). This patch also resolves a
longstanding annoyance about custom error messages from variable assign
hooks: they should modify, not appear separately from, guc.c's own message
about "invalid parameter value".
were reporting ERROR for interactive assignments and LOG for other cases,
some were saying nothing for non-interactive cases, and a few did yet other
things. Make them use a new function GUC_complaint_elevel() to establish
a reasonably uniform policy about how to report. There are still a few
edge cases such as assign_search_path(), but it's much better than before.
Per gripe from Devrim Gunduz and subsequent discussion.
As noted by Alvaro, it'd be better to fold these custom messages into the
standard "invalid parameter value" complaint from guc.c, perhaps as the DETAIL
field. However that will require more redesign than seems prudent for 8.3.
This is a relatively safe, low-impact change that we can afford to risk now.
transaction, unless rolled back or overridden by a SET clause for the same
variable attached to a surrounding function call. Per discussion, these
seem the best semantics. Note that this is an INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE: in 8.0
through 8.2, SET LOCAL's effects disappeared at subtransaction commit
(leading to behavior that made little sense at the SQL level).
I took advantage of the opportunity to rewrite and simplify the GUC variable
save/restore logic a little bit. The old idea of a "tentative" value is gone;
it was a hangover from before we had a stack. Also, we no longer need a stack
entry for every nesting level, but only for those in which a variable's value
actually changed.
and in passing, fix some bogosities dating from the custom_variable_classes
patch. Fix guc-file.l to correctly check changes in custom_variable_classes
that are attempted concurrently with additions/removals of custom variables,
and don't allow the new setting to be applied in advance of checking it.
Clean up messy and undocumented situation for string variables with NULL
boot_val. Fix DefineCustomVariable functions to initialize boot_val
correctly. Prevent find_option from inserting bogus placeholders for custom
variables that are simply inquired about rather than being set.
performance front, but with feature freeze upon us I think it's time to
drive a stake in the ground and say that this will be in 7.5.
Alvaro Herrera, with some help from Tom Lane.
should not be too eager to reject paths involving unknown schemas, since
it can't really tell whether the schemas exist in the target database.
(Also, when reading pg_dumpall output, it could be that the schemas
don't exist yet, but eventually will.) ALTER USER SET has a similar issue.
So, reduce the normal ERROR to a NOTICE when checking search_path values
for these commands. Supporting this requires changing the API for GUC
assign_hook functions, which causes the patch to touch a lot of places,
but the changes are conceptually trivial.
heuristic determination of day vs month in date/time input. Add the
ability to specify that input is interpreted as yy-mm-dd order (which
formerly worked, but only for yy greater than 31). DateStyle's input
component now has the preferred spellings DMY, MDY, or YMD; the older
keywords European and US are now aliases for the first two of these.
Per recent discussions on pgsql-general.
GUC support. It's now possible to set datestyle, timezone, and
client_encoding from postgresql.conf and per-database or per-user
settings. Also, implement rollback of SET commands that occur in a
transaction that later fails. Create a SET LOCAL var = value syntax
that sets the variable only for the duration of the current transaction.
All per previous discussions in pghackers.
Tom Lane
Magnus Hagander
Bruce Momjian
PostgreSQL Daemon