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From: Jacob Champion <jacob.champion@enterprisedb.com>
Date: Tue, 7 Jul 2026 14:48:16 -0700
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Subject: Re: Proposal: new file format for hba/ident/hosts configuration?
To: Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net>,
 Zsolt Parragi <zsolt.parragi@percona.com>
Cc: Tristan Partin <tristan@partin.io>,
	PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>
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On Tue, Jul 7, 2026 at 2:21=E2=80=AFPM Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net>=
 wrote:
> I am really not a fan of implementing more and more little languages insi=
de Postgres. Doing so will incur a non-zero maintenance burden.

Sure, but the status quo has its own self-compounding maintenance
burden, in which we'll either need to keep implementing little
languages (as with pg_hosts.conf) or else finally decide to refactor.

On Tue, Jul 7, 2026 at 10:00=E2=80=AFAM Zsolt Parragi <zsolt.parragi@percon=
a.com> wrote:
> What do you think about this in general? About using TOML? About the
> specific TOML format I suggested here?

FWIW, I was recently looking at TOML for libpqrc [1]. Of the
non-custom options you've presented, I prefer its feature set, so I
think it's at least an interesting alternative to explore. I was
especially interested in the pyproject.toml conventions, where
different parts of the ecosystem all coexist in the same configuration
space -- that might be important for letting libpq and other drivers
move in parallel.

I'd be most interested in a mockup of the "final state" you have in
mind. That'd help highlight any need for homegrown syntax. (While
postgresql.conf may be declared out-of-scope, it's hard to imagine
we'd take steps towards an alternate format without some idea of what
the central server config is going to look like in the end.)

Thanks for working on this!

--Jacob

[1] https://postgr.es/m/CAOYmi%2BmhiTPmNxy9JDKh%2BpahDxz2OoxAf%3D-jq%2BG%2B=
YUkHHqAGUA%40mail.gmail.com