Feedback-ID: ia2694551:Fastmail
Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 09:51:45 +0100
From: Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@alvh.no-ip.org>
To: Hunaid Sohail <hunaidpgml@gmail.com>
Cc: Dean Rasheed <dean.a.rasheed@gmail.com>, 
	Sami Imseih <samimseih@gmail.com>, "David G. Johnston" <david.g.johnston@gmail.com>, 
	Maiquel Grassi <grassi@hotmail.com.br>, "pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org" <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>, 
	Jim Jones <jim.jones@uni-muenster.de>, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>, 
	Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com>, "Imseih (AWS), Sami" <simseih@amazon.com>, 
	Peter Eisentraut <peter@eisentraut.org>, Pavel Luzanov <p.luzanov@postgrespro.ru>, 
	Erik Wienhold <ewie@ewie.name>
Subject: Re: Psql meta-command conninfo+
Message-ID: <202501140851.ikqvuc44gyzf@alvherre.pgsql>
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Precedence: bulk

On 2025-Jan-14, Hunaid Sohail wrote:

> I'm not attaching the patch as it requires some formatting.

Remember pgindent formats code in bulk.  A quick useful workflow is to
do that first, apply manual adjustments next, run pgindent again
afterwards.

> I've tried the approach and attached the output.  Does this look good?

Hmm, I'm not sure I like the third column particularly; it's noisy to
have on all the time.  I'd leave that for \conninfo++ maybe :-)

_If_ we keep the descriptions, I suggest that the majority need to be
very short, say three words tops, with exceptions allowed for egregious
cases (if any).  We should get rid of filler words such as "Displays
the" or "Indicates whether".  For instance, I'd turn "Indicates if
GSSAPI authentication was used for the connection" into "GSSAPI
authenticated?" which conveys exactly the same; the ending "?" matches
things like "Key?" in \d of an index or the "Default?" column in \dc.
It's a boolean, so people know how to read it.

> I was wondering how we can show the descriptions of parameters
> from PQparameterStatus. We can create an array of descriptions,
> but if the order changes somehow, it can mess things up.

Definitely avoid writing code that can easily be broken by later changes
(future parameter additions and so on).

-- 
Álvaro Herrera         PostgreSQL Developer  —  https://www.EnterpriseDB.com/
"The problem with the facetime model is not just that it's demoralizing, but
that the people pretending to work interrupt the ones actually working."
                  -- Paul Graham, http://www.paulgraham.com/opensource.html