Re: pg_ctl strangeness under msys

Bruce Momjian wrote:

>Magnus Hagander wrote:
>
>
>>>I have seen some strange things using pg_ctl under MSys:
>>>
>>>. "pg_ctl status" from the command line logs to the event log.
>>>Apparently it thinks it's not on a tty. Works fine from
>>>Windows cmd prompt.
>>>. this hangs: perl -e '@foo=`pg_ctl -w start`;'
>>>  but this doesn't: perl -e 'system("pg_ctl -w start");'
>>>
>>>Finding the problem with the last one has cost me hours in
>>>trying to get the buildfarm to run.
>>>
>>>Anyone have ideas about ways to fix? Or do we just note it
>>>and live with it?
>>>
>>>
>>As I'm sure you are already aware we've had a lot of problems with the
>>msys console. Buffernig and others. I think we at some point decided to
>>say that minor issues on the win32 consoles isn't really something we're
>>concerned about, people will run things from the cmd console in 99.9% of
>>all cases.
>>
>>Not sure how to fix it. The eventlog checking code uses isatty() IIRC,
>>and that one is clearly returning the wrong thing on msys. Not sure how
>>to code around that.
>>
>>
>
>We actually added the ability to turn the psql pager always on to fix a
>problem with a Win32 user running psql inside some kind of application
>(emacs?) where isatty returned the wrong value.  I don't see any clean
>workaround here though.
>
>

It might be useful to have such a switch on pg_ctl too ("Use
stdout/stderr even if you think it isn't a tty"). I can't see why it
couldn't be done. None of this is critical, it was just confusing and
time-consuming to find workarounds.

cheers

andrew