Re: psql \d+ and oid display

Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> writes:
> On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 11:42 AM, Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> wrote:
>> The bottom line is we already have complex rules to display only what is
>> _reasonable_.  If you want everything, you have to look at the system
>> tables.

> I don't really agree with that.  I understand that there's some
> information (like dependencies) that you can't get through psql
> because we don't really have a principled idea for what an interface
> to that would look like, but I don't think that's a good thing.  Every
> time I have to write a query by hand to get some information instead
> of being able to get it through a backslash command, that slows me
> down considerably.  But I'm lucky in that I actually know enough to do
> that, which most users don't.  Information that you can't get through
> \d+ just isn't available to a large percentage of our user base
> without huge effort.  We shouldn't be stingy about putting stuff in
> there that people may need to see.

At least in this particular case, that's an uninteresting argument.
We aren't being stingy with information, because the proposed new display
approach provides *exactly the same information* as before.  (If you see
the "Has OIDs" line, it's got OIDs, otherwise it doesn't.)  What we are
being stingy about is display clutter, and I believe that's a good thing.
        regards, tom lane