Re: machine-parseable object descriptions

Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@2ndquadrant.com> writes:
> One change I made was to move all the new code from dependency.c into
> objectaddress.c.  The only reason it was in dependency.c was that
> getObjectDescription was there in the first place; but it doesn't seem
> to me that it really belongs there.  (Back when it was first created,
> there was no objectaddress.c at all, and dependency.c was the only user
> of it.)  If there were no backpatching considerations, I would suggest
> we move getObjectDescription() to objectaddress.c as well, but I'm not
> sure it's worth the trouble, but I'm not wedded to that if somebody
> thinks both things should be kept together.

+1 for moving getObjectDescription to objectaddress.c.  As you say,
that's probably where it would've been if that file had existed at
the time.  I don't recall that we've had to back-patch many changes
in that function, so I don't think that concern is major.

> Finally: it'd be nice to be able to get pg_am identities with these
> functions too.  Then you could use a simple query to get object
> identities + descriptions from pg_description (right now you have to
> exclude that catalog specifically, otherwise the query bombs out).  But
> it'd be a lot of trouble, and since these objects are not really
> pluggable, I'm not bothering.  We can always add it later if there's
> more interesting use for it.

I think that would be a good thing to add, but no objection to leaving
it for a follow-on patch.
        regards, tom lane