Re: Possibility to disable `ALTER SYSTEM`

On Mon, Mar 18, 2024 at 11:46 AM Magnus Hagander <magnus@hagander.net> wrote:
> > Wouldn't that break pgBackrest which IIRC write to .auto.conf directly
> > without using ALTER SYSTEM?
>
> Ugh of course. And not only that, it would also break pg_basebackup
> which does the same.
>
> So I guess that's not a good idea. I guess nobody anticipated this
> when that was done:)

I'm also +1 for the idea that the feature should only disable ALTER
SYSTEM, not postgresql.auto.conf. I can't really see any reason why it
needs to do both, and it might be more convenient if it didn't. If
you're managing PostgreSQL's configuration externally, you might find
it convenient to write the configuration you're managing into
postgresql.auto.conf. Or you might want to write it to
postgresql.conf. Or you might want to do something more complicated
with include directives or whatever. But there's no reason why you
*couldn't* want to use postgresql.auto.conf, and on the other hand I
don't see how anyone benefits from that file not being read. That just
seems confusing.

--
Robert Haas
EDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com