MIME-Version: 1.0
References: <ba567012-bff5-465a-8ee7-913b32f45d89@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <ba567012-bff5-465a-8ee7-913b32f45d89@gmail.com>
From: Jelte Fennema-Nio <postgres@jeltef.nl>
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2026 11:47:02 +0200
Message-ID: 
 <CAGECzQTgidHEanmHbcihiEfZ3D2hinqrR57n6YH3n94+k1z4GA@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Environment variable to disable diffs file output
To: =?UTF-8?B?0JjQu9GM0Y8g0KfQtdGA0LTQsNC60L7Qsg==?=
 <i.cherdakov.pg@gmail.com>
Cc: pgsql-hackers <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Archived-At: 
 <https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/CAGECzQTgidHEanmHbcihiEfZ3D2hinqrR57n6YH3n94%2Bk1z4GA%40mail.gmail.com>
Precedence: bulk

On Mon, 6 Apr 2026 at 09:56, =D0=98=D0=BB=D1=8C=D1=8F =D0=A7=D0=B5=D1=80=D0=
=B4=D0=B0=D0=BA=D0=BE=D0=B2 <i.cherdakov.pg@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd like to add a environment variable to the patch to
> disable diff output. Sometimes you have to be creative
> with exploratory testing, modifying test files, etc.,
> and multiple diff outputs can become a nuisance. This
> doesn't change the default behavior, but it does give
> you control over diff output in tests for specific
> scenarios where a large number of failures are expected
> (mass runs or exploratory testing with changing tests).

I'm fine with adding the abilitity to configure what pg_regress should
print, but it's unclear to me what's special about the diff output
compared to all the other output? i.e. what is the output you would
actually like to see for your use case? Piping everything to /dev/null
would silence all output except for the exit code, but I guess you
want some output. i.e. what do you do with the output that you get? Do
you only want to know which tests failed? If so, do you care about
which tests are passing?