docs: config chapter

Neil Conway wrote:

Barring any objections, I'd like to apply this later tonight or
tomorrow, before the tree drifts.

We are in beta; the time for major reorganizations has passed.

Moreover, I don't agree with the premise. Could you point to the
discussion?

--
Peter Eisentraut
http://developer.postgresql.org/~petere/

Peter Eisentraut wrote:

We are in beta; the time for major reorganizations has passed.

This is not a major reorganization.

In any case, the primary reason to avoid major reorganizations during
beta is the risk of regressions, which does not really apply here.

Moreover, I don't agree with the premise. Could you point to the
discussion?

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-docs/2004-11/msg00029.php

-Neil

Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> writes:

Neil Conway wrote:

Barring any objections, I'd like to apply this later tonight or
tomorrow, before the tree drifts.

We are in beta; the time for major reorganizations has passed.

That would be a valid objection to a code reorganization, but I don't
see that it applies to documentation. Indeed, personally I tend to
do most of my major editorial work on the docs during beta, because
all the rest of the time I'm too busy hacking code. I don't really
want a policy that says "you can't work on the docs during beta".

[ Of course this point is independent of the merits, if any, of this
particular proposal. ]

regards, tom lane

Neil Conway <neilc@samurai.com> writes:

Peter Eisentraut wrote:

Moreover, I don't agree with the premise. Could you point to the
discussion?

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-docs/2004-11/msg00029.php

As far as I could tell by eyeball, you are simply moving the section out
to be a separate chapter and a separate file, without changing any text?

This was agreed to in the above thread (or at least no one objected),
but I thought we'd also agreed to provide some sort of alphabetical list
of the config parameters, perhaps similar to the table at the front of
the "System Catalogs" chapter. I don't agree with some of the more
radical suggestions in that thread, such as
one-page-per-config-variable, but the alpha index seemed to meet with
everyone's approval.

regards, tom lane

Tom Lane wrote:

As far as I could tell by eyeball, you are simply moving the section out
to be a separate chapter and a separate file, without changing any text?

Sorry, I should have noted that explicitly in my original email. The
vast majority of the patch is just moving the same text to a separate
file and chapter, and then fixing the resulting fallout. I also tweaked
a few areas in the text where appropriate ("This subsection" -> "This
section" and similar).

This was agreed to in the above thread (or at least no one objected),
but I thought we'd also agreed to provide some sort of alphabetical list
of the config parameters, perhaps similar to the table at the front of
the "System Catalogs" chapter.

Oh, there is definitely room for more improvement on this front -- Josh
has some concrete ideas for changes he wants to make, I believe. I just
submitted this to get it into the tree so that subsequent patches will
be easier to review and less likely to drift.

-Neil

Peter Eisentraut wrote:

Moreover, I don't agree with the premise.

This patch is blocking other work. If you still object to it, can you
elaborate why?

Otherwise I'll apply it this evening (EST).

-Neil

Neil Conway wrote:

This patch is blocking other work [...]
Otherwise I'll apply it this evening (EST).

Applied.

-Neil