Re: unite recovery.conf and postgresql.conf

On sön, 2011-09-25 at 12:58 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> And it's not like we don't break configuration file
> contents in most releases anyway, so I really fail to see why this one
> has suddenly become sacrosanct. 

Well, there is a slight difference.  Changes in postgresql.conf
parameter names and settings are adjusted automatically for me by my
package upgrade script.  If we, say, changed the names of recovery.conf
parameters, I'd have to get a new version of my $SuperReplicationTool.
That tool could presumably look at PG_VERSION and put a recovery.conf
with the right spellings in the right place.

But if we completely change the way the replication configuration
interacts, it's not clear that a smooth upgrade is possible without
significant effort.  That said, I don't see why it wouldn't be possible,
but let's design with upgradability in mind, instead of claiming that we
have never supported upgrades of this kind anyway.