From: Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>
Message-Id: <200407171908.i6HJ8hc06808@candle.pha.pa.us>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] Point in Time Recovery
In-Reply-To: <16031.1090090426@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2004 15:08:43 -0400 (EDT)
Cc: Simon Riggs <simon@2ndquadrant.com>, pgsql-patches@postgresql.org
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Tom Lane wrote:
> [ ... 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 assume archive_dest is used for both archive and recovery of archives.

> 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.

I think the idea is that you would turn archiving on and off regularly
while you might never change the archive_command value.  Also, how would
you disable it?  Set it to "", and if you do, you then have not way to
remember your command string when you want to re-enable it.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 359-1001
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