Re: timezone GUC

On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 12:12 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> writes:
>> So I think you whacked this around some more to get a *somewhat* more
>> sensible behavior, but ISTM that the behavior here still not really
>> right.  Should we select a timezone at startup time even if we don't
>> immediately need it, so that this can work correctly if we revert to
>> the default down the road?
>
> We could do that, but the issue that this code is trying to avoid is
> that identify_system_timezone can easily add several seconds to the
> postmaster startup time.  So one of the reasons why someone would be
> putting a timezone setting into postgresql.conf in the first place is
> to not pay that startup overhead.  I'm not thrilled with the idea
> of defeating that in order to cover the corner case where they remove
> the setting later.

Yeah, I'm not thrilled with that either.  However, I'm also not
thrilled with the existing behavior.  Consistency is the hobgoblin of
small minds, and also mine.

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company