Re: [COMMITTERS] pgsql: Allow external recovery_config_directory

Heikki Linnakangas <hlinnakangas@vmware.com> writes:
> On 27.03.2013 18:10, Simon Riggs wrote:
>> On 27 March 2013 15:35, Heikki Linnakangas<hlinnakangas@vmware.com>  wrote:
>>> Ok, cool. Can you please revert this commit so that we can move on, then?

>> Please explain why you want this reverted, without mentioning the
>> other task we agree is required.

> If an admin can't trust that the file is placed in $PGDATA, it's harder 
> to determine if a server is a master or a standby. It makes tools that 
> try to promote / demote a server more complicated, because they need to 
> take this setting into account. Lastly, it breaks the new pg_basebackup 
> -R functionality; pg_basebackup will create the recovery.conf file, but 
> it won't take effect.

FWIW, I agree that this is a bad idea and should be reverted.

Simon is claiming that because he described this idea in one sentence
(out of a larger post) three months ago, everyone agreed to the idea and
there is no longer any room for discussion.  In reality I suspect nobody
really thought about the implications at the time.  In any case, the
arguments that have been made today seem to me to be sufficient reasons
why we *don't* want to put recovery.conf in random places outside the
data directory.
        regards, tom lane