Re: Removing postgres -f command line option

Tom Lane wrote:
> Heikki Linnakangas <heikki.linnakangas@enterprisedb.com> writes:
> > While looking at Shigeru Hanada's foreign join pushdown patch, I noticed 
> > a command line option that I didn't know to exist:
> 
> > $ postgres --help
> > ...
> > Developer options:
> >    -f s|i|n|m|h    forbid use of some plan types
> 
> Hmm, I thought I'd fixed that help message to match reality recently.
> 
> > That seems completely useless to me, because you can also do "-c 
> > enable_seqscan=off". Any objections to removing the -f option altogether?
> 
> I use it.  See also src/test/regress/regressplans.sh, which would become
> greatly less wieldy if it had to spell out the switches long-form.

I think it is hard to argue that such a  user-visible flag is
reasonable, even if it helps backend developers avoid some keystrokes.

I think flags used only by backend developers should be things that can
_only_ be done with flags.

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