Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2023 14:02:53 -0800
From: Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com>
To: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Cc: Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>,
	Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@alvh.no-ip.org>,
	"pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org" <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: improving user.c error messages
Message-ID: <20230126220253.GA1759865@nathanxps13>
References: <20230126002251.GA1506128@nathanxps13>
 <20230126090739.nspznasnb4x3v5l4@alvherre.pgsql>
 <20230126191358.GA1660026@nathanxps13>
 <CA+TgmoYZcZ-PUp7muZEG20Jz4BtgUSngA3p7k=Nk-_8FayO5xQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <20230126195929.GB1702315@nathanxps13>
 <3165700.1674763663@sss.pgh.pa.us>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
In-Reply-To: <3165700.1674763663@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Archived-At: 
 <https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/20230126220253.GA1759865%40nathanxps13>
Precedence: bulk

On Thu, Jan 26, 2023 at 03:07:43PM -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
> Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com> writes:
>> On Thu, Jan 26, 2023 at 02:42:05PM -0500, Robert Haas wrote:
>>> Basically my question is whether having one error message for all of
>>> those cases is good enough, or whether we should be trying harder.
> 
> I think the password case needs to be kept separate, because the
> conditions for it are different (specifically the exception that
> you can alter your own password).  Lumping the rest together
> seems OK to me.

Hm.  In v2, the error message for both cases is the same:

	ERROR:  permission denied to alter role
	DETAIL:  You must have CREATEROLE privilege and ADMIN OPTION on role "regress_priv_user2".

We could add "to change its attributes" and "to change its password" to
separate the two, but I'm not sure that adds much.  ISTM the current error
message for ALTER ROLE PASSWORD implies that you can change your own
password, and that's lost with my patch.  Perhaps we should add an
errhint() with that information instead.  WDYT?

-- 
Nathan Bossart
Amazon Web Services: https://aws.amazon.com