no port support in pg_ctl?

To answer the question "why?".. I'm wanting to run multiple independent
database sessions of Postgresql on the same machine.  I thought I'd just
copy pgsql.sh startup scripts and add the -D option to specifiy different
database locations and -p option to specify different tcp port
numbers.  However, I spent a long day trying to figure out why the script
was stalling for ~ 60 seconds.

The pg_ctl script (called by my startup script) does not accept a port
argument and the port argument is needed for a test that the script
performs with psql.  The use of psql in this script verifies that the
database is running. if there is
a deviation from the default port.  The PGPORT and
other shell variables can be used, but their use has been avoidable for
everything else by using command line arguments or the application parsing
postmaster.opts files.

I'm wondering if the maintainer of pg_ctl is willing to add a -port
argument to pg_ctl or add code to parse postmaster.opts?


Steve Bourg