Re: CREATE TABLE glitch -fix request for 7.2

Josh Berkus wrote:
> Tom, Peter, Stephan, et al.:
> 
> Here's a glitch that's bothered me for a while (ver 7.0 -> 7.2b4 ) in
>  PostgreSQL DDL statements.  I was thinking that since 7.2 is still in beta,
>  that you could fix it this version.
> 
> To produce the glitch:
> 1. Create a SQL script file that drops a table, then creates that table with a
>  SERIAL primary key (I do this all the time to build my databases)
> 2. Run the script once to create the table.  You'll get a error (no table to
>  drop) but that doesn't matter.
> 3. Run the script a second time, as if you were making changes to the data
>  structure and needed to rebuild.  
> 4. You will get an error telling you that "table1_id_seq" already exists, and
>  the CREATE TABLE statement will fail.
> 
> This is very user-unfriendly behaviour, especially in a database that still
>  does not support about 50% of ALTER TABLE.  I spend a fair amount of extra
>  time deleting SERIAL sequences when I am doing the database-building part of
>  the development process.
> 
> Can we change this behavior, please?  I'd suppose that it would require you to
>  create some sort of permanent link between SERIAL columns and the sequences
>  they spawn.

We need pg_depend table to track dependency of sequence on specific
tables, hopefully in >=7.3.

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