Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2025 16:55:56 -0600
From: Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com>
To: Daniel Gustafsson <daniel@yesql.se>
Cc: "David G. Johnston" <david.g.johnston@gmail.com>,
	Peter Smith <smithpb2250@gmail.com>,
	PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: describe special values in GUC descriptions more consistently
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On Tue, Feb 11, 2025 at 11:41:51PM +0100, Daniel Gustafsson wrote:
>> On 11 Feb 2025, at 19:11, Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> I thought about this one a bit, and I actually came to the opposite
>> conclusion.  IMHO it's reasonably obvious that an empty string means that
>> the file isn't loaded, so there's not much point in stating it in the GUC
>> description.  Instead, I think we should follow the
>> archive_command/archive_library example and use this space _only_ as a
>> cross-reference to each other.  There's certainly some nuances missed with
>> this strategy, but that's not unique to this GUC.
> 
> I don't necessarily disagree with this, but the proposed wording makes it sound
> sort of like users have to select one or the other.  Could it be softened a
> little like perhaps "An empty string disables, \"ssl_crl_foo\" is still used"?

Hm.  I'm starting to lean towards considering these as too complicated to
include in the GUC description.

-- 
nathan