[HACKERS] RFC: ALTER SYSTEM [...] COMMENT

-hackers,

We have had ALTER SYSTEM for some time now. It is awesome to be able to 
make changes that can be system wide without ever having to hit a shell 
but it does lack a feature that seems like an oversight, the ability to 
comment.

Problem we are trying to solve:

Having documentation for changes to GUC parameters that are modified via 
ALTER SYSTEM.

Why?

Because documentation is good and required for a proper production system.

How?

I propose:

Add a column to pg_settings comment(text)
Change the grammar to allow:

ALTER SYSTEM SET configuration_parameter { TO | = } { value | 'value' | 
DEFAULT } COMMENT 'comment'

Example:

ALTER SYSTEM SET maintenance_work_mem TO '1GB' COMMENT IS 'Increased to 
allow autovacuum to be more efficient';

Potential issues:

Does not use existing comment functionality. Alternate solution which 
would decrease functionality is:

COMMENT ON SETTING setting IS 'comment';

Looking forward, we may want to do the following:

1. Make it so any object can have a comment with creation, e.g;

CREATE TABLE table () COMMENT IS '';

2. Make it so comments are appended not replaced.

Thanks in advance,

JD



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