Subject: Re: strange error reporting
To: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>, Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>
Cc: "pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org" <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
References: 
 <CA+TgmobssJ6rS22dspWnu-oDxXevGmhMD8VcRBjmj-b9UDqRjw@mail.gmail.com>
 <717401.1611163169@sss.pgh.pa.us>
 <CA+Tgmoas37XHT48KjEb0zACCTxSTkba_VP-BDQAft-Mj5_5z_Q@mail.gmail.com>
 <718535.1611164867@sss.pgh.pa.us>
 <CA+Tgmobcfsh9jVdgiF+cUwtmbrdiLE8F9mt7a2J4yyO-ix1G1A@mail.gmail.com>
 <798280.1611192827@sss.pgh.pa.us>
From: Peter Eisentraut <peter.eisentraut@enterprisedb.com>
Message-ID: <0621c8e2-6b87-219d-2eaf-ae1a2cb822b2@enterprisedb.com>
Date: Mon, 3 May 2021 12:08:04 +0200
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:78.0)
 Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/78.10.0
MIME-Version: 1.0
In-Reply-To: <798280.1611192827@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed
Content-Language: en-US
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Archived-At: 
 <https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/0621c8e2-6b87-219d-2eaf-ae1a2cb822b2%40enterprisedb.com>
Precedence: bulk

On 21.01.21 02:33, Tom Lane wrote:
>>> I'd be inclined to spell it "connection to server at ... failed",
>>> but that sort of wording is surely also possible.
> 
>> "connection to server" rather than "connection to database" works for
>> me; in fact, I think I like it slightly better.
> 
> If I don't hear any other opinions, I'll change these messages to
> 
> "connection to server at socket \"%s\" failed:"
> "connection to server at \"%s\" (%s), port %s failed:"
> 
> (or maybe "server on socket"?  "at" sounds right for the IP address
> case, but it feels a little off in the socket pathname case.)

I was just trying some stuff with PG14, which led me to this thread.

I find these new error messages to be more distracting than before in 
some cases.  For example:

PG13:

clusterdb: error: could not connect to database typo: FATAL:  database 
"typo" does not exist

PG14:

clusterdb: error: connection to server on socket "/tmp/.s.PGSQL.65432" 
failed: FATAL:  database "typo" does not exist

Throwing the socket address in there seems a bit distracting and 
misleading, and it also pushes off the actual information very far to 
the end.  (Also, in some cases the socket path is very long, making the 
actual information even harder to find.)  By the time you get to this 
error, you have already connected, so mentioning the server address 
seems secondary at best.