Re: vpath builds and verbose error messages

Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@commandprompt.com> writes:
> Excerpts from Peter Eisentraut's message of vie nov 18 01:34:18 -0300 2011:
>> When using verbose error messages (psql \set VERBOSITY verbose) with a
>> vpath build, you get this sort of thing:
>> LOCATION:  transformColumnRef,
/build/buildd-postgresql-9.1_9.1.1-3-i386-AP0ovQ/postgresql-9.1-9.1.1/build/../src/backend/parser/parse_expr.c:766
>> 
>> Can we shorten that path somehow?  Either in the C code when printing it
>> out, or during the build.  Any ideas?

> Huh, I hadn't noticed, even though I see those all the time.  I agree
> with shortening the path so that it's relative to the root source dir,
> if that's what you propose:

In a non-vpath build you just get the file name (or at least that's what
I'm used to seeing).  I agree with Peter that a full path seems a bit
over the top.

It wouldn't be that hard for elog.c to do strrchr(fname, '/') or
something like that, but the idea that there are hundreds of full-path
strings embedded in the executable is a bit annoying.  I guess we could
hope that the compiler is bright enough to store it only once per source
file, so the actual space requirement may not be all *that* bad.
        regards, tom lane