Re: PostgreSQL pollutes the file system

On 3/19/19 11:19 AM, Fred .Flintstone wrote:
> PostgreSQL pollutes the file system with lots of binaries that it is
> not obvious that they belong to PostgreSQL.
> 
> Such as "/usr/bin/createdb", etc.
> 
> It would be better if these files were renamed to be prefixed with
> pg_, such as pg_createdb.
> Or even better postgresql-createdb then be reachable by through a
> "postgresql" wrapper script.

Hi,

This topic has been discussed before e.g. in 2008 in 
https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/47EA5CC0.8040102%40sun.com and 
also more recently but I cannot find it in the archives right now.

I am personally in favor of renaming e.g. createdb to pg_createdb, since 
it is not obvious that createdb belongs to PostgreSQL when reading a 
script or looking in /usr/bin, but we would need a some kind of 
deprecation cycle here or we would suddenly break tons of people's scripts.

And as for the git-like solution with a wrapper script, that seems to be 
the modern way to do things but would be an even larger breakage and I 
am not convinced the advantage would be worth it especially since our 
executables are not as closely related and consistent as for example git's.

Andreas