traced this back to what I believe is an error in the sgml file used to
generate this comment, found in pgsql/doc/src/sgml/ref/alter_table.sgml.


Stephen Birch

> > It would be nice for new users; I think it would make it easier
> > for them to actually set out and do it.  Many new users are
> > of the not-so-knowledgable variety, and shell scripting isn't
> > something they want to undertake.
>
> Can someone modify the vacuumdb shell script to do that?
i tried it... it seems to work

neko@kredit.sth.sz

initdb. No more obscure dependencies on environment variables or paths.
It
now finds the templates and the right postgres itself (with cmd line
options as fallback). It also no longer depends on $USER (su safe), and
doesn't advertise that --username allows you to install the db as a
different user, since that doesn't work anyway. Also, recovery and
cleanup
on all errors. Consistent options, clearer documentation.

Please take a look at this and adopt it if you feel it's safe enough. I
have simulated all the stupid circumstances I could think of, but you
never know with shell scripts.

Oh yeah, you can give the postgres user a default password now.

--
Peter Eisentraut                  Sernanders väg 10:115

anywhere from zero to two TODO items.

* Allow flag to control COPY input/output of NULLs

I got this:
COPY table .... [ WITH NULL AS 'string' ]
which does what you'd expect. The default is \N, otherwise you can use
empty strings, etc. On Copy In this acts like a filter: every data item
that looks like 'string' becomes a NULL. Pretty straightforward.

This also seems to be related to

* Make postgres user have a password by default

If I recall this discussion correctly, the problem was actually that the
default password for the postgres (or any) user is in fact "\N", because
of the way copy is used. With this change, the file pg_pwd is copied out
with nulls as empty strings, so if someone doesn't have a password, the
password is just '', which one would expect from a new account. I don't
think anyone really wants a hard-coded default password.

Peter Eisentraut                  Sernanders väg 10:115

Try to provide a more lucid discussion in 'Using Aggregate Functions'
tutorial section.

at all, and because of shell quoting rules this can't be fixed, so I put
in error messages to that end.

Also, calling create or drop database in a transaction block is not so
good either, because the file system mysteriously refuses to roll back rm
calls on transaction aborts. :) So I put in checks to see if a transaction
is in progress and signal an error.

Also I put the whole call in a transaction of its own to be able to roll
back changes to pg_database in case the file system operations fail.

The alternative location issues I posted recently were untouched, awaiting
the outcome of that discussion. Other than that, this should be much more
fool-proof now.

The docs I cleaned up as well.

Peter Eisentraut                  Sernanders väg 10:115

against the sources from one hour ago and contain all the portable and
up
to date stuff.

A few other CVS "householding" things you might want to take care of:

* Remove the src/bin/cleardbdir directory

* Remove the file src/bin/psql/sql_help.h from the repository, as it is
a derived file and is build by the release_prep.

Peter Eisentraut

Remove references to Ultrix; haven't heard from it for a *long* time :(

 specific meaning wrt copyright (or lack thereof).

them into the scripts dir. I also added a --list option to show already
installed languages.

This whole moving and renaming totally confused CVS and my checked out
copy got completely fried last night. When you apply the source patch,
please make sure that all the directories src/bin/{create|destroy}* as
well as vacuumdb, cleardbdir are gone and that all the scripts (7) are
in
scripts/.

Meanwhile I am still puzzled about what happened with the docs patch.
Because I don't know what you got now, the second attachment contains
the
files

ref/allfiles.sgml
ref/commands.sgml
ref/createlang.sgml
ref/droplang.sgml
doc/src/sgml/Makefile

Peter Eisentraut                  Sernanders väg 10:115

This one should work much better than the one I sent in previously. The
functionality is the same, but the patch was missing one file resulting
in
the compilation failing. The docs also received a minor fix.

Peter Eisentraut                  Sernanders väg 10:115

PQconnectStart
PQconnectPoll
PQresetStart
PQresetPoll
PQsetenvStart
PQsetenvPoll
PQsetenvAbort

and brings into the published interface

PQsetenv.

The first four are asynchronous analogues of PQconnectdb and PQreset -
they allow an application to connect to the DB without blocking on
remote I/O.

The PQsetenv functions perform an environment negotiation with the
server.

Internal to libpq, pqReadReady and pqWriteReady have been made available
across the library (they were previously static functions inside
fe-misc.c).  A lot of internal rearrangement has been necessary to
support these changes.

The API documentation has been updated also.

Caveats:

  o  The Windows code does not default to using non-blocking sockets,
since I have no documentation: Define WIN32_NON_BLOCKING_CONNECTIONS to
do that.

  o  The SSL code still blocks.


Ewan Mellor.

rate
  it's better than what used to be there.

* Does proper SQL "host variable" substitution as pointed out by Andreas
  Zeugwetter (thanks): select * from :foo; Also some changes in how ':'
  and ';' are treated (escape with \ to send to backend). This does
_not_
  affect the '::' cast operator, but perhaps others that contain : or ;
  (but there are none right now).

* To show description with a <something> listing, append '?' to command
  name, e.g., \df?. This seemed to be the convenient and logical
solution.
  Or append a '+' to see more useless information, e.g., \df+.

* Fixed fflush()'ing bug pointed out by Jan during the regression test
  discussion.

* Added LastOid variable. This ought to take care of TODO item "Add a
  function to return the last inserted oid, for use in psql scripts"
  (under CLIENTS)
  E.g.,
insert into foo values(...);
insert into bar values(..., :LastOid);
\echo $LastOid

* \d command shows constraints, rules, and triggers defined on the table
  (in addition to indices)

* Various fixes, optimizations, corrections

* Documentation update as well


Note: This now requires snprintf(), which, if necessary, is taken from
src/backend/port. This is certainly a little weird, but it should
suffice
until a source tree cleanup is done.

Enjoy.

--
Peter Eisentraut                  Sernanders väg 10:115

Make all system indexes unique.
Make all cache loads use system indexes.
Rename *rel to *relid in inheritance tables.
Rename cache names to be clearer.