Re: Idea: closing the loop for "pg_ctl reload"

* Tom Lane (tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us) wrote:
> Jan de Visser <jan@de-visser.net> writes:
> > Attached a new patch, rebased against the current head. Errors in
> > pg_hba.conf and pg_ident.conf are now also noticed.
>
> > I checked the documentation for pg_ctl reload, and the only place where
> > it's explained seems to be runtime.sgml and that description is so
> > high-level that adding this new bit of functionality wouldn't make much
> > sense.
>
> BTW, it's probably worth pointing out that the recent work on the
> pg_file_settings view has taken away a large part of the use-case for
> this, in that you can find out more with less risk by inspecting
> pg_file_settings before issuing SIGHUP, instead of SIGHUP'ing and
> hoping you didn't break anything too nastily.  Also, you can use
> pg_file_settings remotely, unlike pg_ctl (though admittedly you
> still need contrib/adminpack or something to allow uploading a
> new config file if you're doing remote admin).
>
> I wonder whether we should consider inventing similar views for
> pg_hba.conf and pg_ident.conf.

Yes.  That's definitely something that I'd been hoping someone would
work on.

Also, thanks for the work on the pg_file_settings code; I agree with all
you did there.
Thanks again!
    Stephen