Re: Bug with pg_ctl -w/wait and config-only directories

Tom Lane wrote:
> Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> writes:
> > Greg Stark wrote:
> >> An interactive tool can dwim automatically but that isn't appropriate
> >> for a startup script. A startupt script should always do the same
> >> thing exactly and do that based on the OS policy, not based on
> >> inspecting what programs are actually running on the machine.
> 
> > I agree, except the Gentoo script does exactly that --- wait for
> > completion using pg_ctl -w.
> 
> As of fairly recently, the Fedora package also uses pg_ctl for both
> starting and stopping.  We've fixed all the reasons that formerly
> existed to avoid use of pg_ctl, and it's a real PITA to try to
> implement the waiting logic at shell level.

OK, that's a good use-case to warrant barrelling ahead with improving
pg_ctl for config-only installs.  What releases do we want to apply that
patch to allow postgres to dump config values and have pg_ctl use them? 
This patch is required for old/new installs for pg_upgrade to work.

Once we decide that, I will work on the pg_upgrade code to use this as
well.  pg_upgrade will use the new pg_ctl but it also needs to find the
data directory via the postgres binary.

--  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>        http://momjian.us EnterpriseDB
http://enterprisedb.com
 + It's impossible for everything to be true. +