Re: explaining "context" column of pg_settings

On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 1:08 PM, Euler Taveira de Oliveira
<euler@timbira.com> wrote:
> Alvaro Herrera escreveu:
>> Perhaps we can replace the current "this setting requires a restart"
>> boilerplate with "this setting has context foo" in setting descriptions,
>> and have a pointer to wherever the description of each context is.
>>
> .. or even foo_param (integer) (restart)
>
> 'restart' is a link describing the context. When I'm reading the manual
> searching for a parameter description, sometimes it is not clear what is the
> context; in this case, I need to query pg_settings to figure out what I have
> to do to change that parameter. It would be fine if that information was
> easily available.

I definitely like the idea of explicitly stating the context of all
the GUCs in some concise yet clear way. I'm not totally sold on:

foo_param (integer) (restart)

since the (restart) is too similar to the (integer). I'm not sure I
have a better proposal offhand though. Maybe something like:

foo_param (integer) [postmaster context]

with "postmaster" a link to wherever we put the context descriptions.
I bet someone can find a prettier way, I'm still not happy with the
above..

Josh