Re: superuser() shortcuts

* Robert Haas (robertmhaas@gmail.com) wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 2, 2014 at 11:29 AM, Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net> wrote:
> > It includes the actual error message, unlike what we have today which is
> > guidence as to what's required to get past the permission denied error.
> >
> > In other words, I disagree that the same amount of information is being
> > conveyed.
>
> So, you think that someone might see the message "must be superuser or
> replication role to use replication slots" and fail to understand that
> they have a permissions problem?

I think that the error message about a permissions problem should be
that there is a permissions problem, first and foremost.

We don't say 'You must have SELECT rights on relation X to select from
it.' when you try to do a SELECT that you're not allowed to.  We throw a
permissions denied error.  As pointed out up-thread, we do similar
things for other cases of permissions denied and even beyond permission
denied errors we tend to match up the errmsg() with the errcode(), which
makes a great deal of sense to me and is why I'm advocating that
position.
Thanks,
    Stephen