To: Simon Riggs <simon@2ndquadrant.com>
Cc: pgman@candle.pha.pa.us, pgsql-patches@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Point in Time Recovery 
In-reply-to: <1089845797.17493.4987.camel@stromboli> 
References: <200407141555.i6EFtnk22984@mail.osdl.org>
	<1089833620.17493.4624.camel@stromboli>
	<1089845797.17493.4987.camel@stromboli>
Comments: In-reply-to Simon Riggs <simon@2ndquadrant.com>
	message dated "Wed, 14 Jul 2004 23:56:39 +0100"
Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2004 14:53:46 -0400
Message-ID: <16031.1090090426@sss.pgh.pa.us>
From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>

[ ... some desultory reading of PITR patch ... ]

What is the point of having both archive_program and archive_dest as
GUC variables?  Wouldn't it be simpler to fold them into one parameter,
viz

	archive_command = 'cp %s /archivedir'

For that matter, do we need a separate archive_mode boolean?  The one
thing I can positively guarantee about archive_dest (or archive_command)
is that we cannot come up with a useful default for it (no, /tmp isn't
good).  Therefore it does not seem very reasonable to let the user turn
on archiving without having explicitly specified an archive destination.

I propose that we fold all three GUC flags into a single archive_command
string whose built-in default is an empty string, and you enable
archiving by setting it to something nonempty.

			regards, tom lane