Invalid user-level setting = confusing error message

Thom Brown <thom@linux.com> writes:

At the moment, if we try to set up a configuration parameter for a
user which doesn't make sense in that context, we get an error message
that doesn't really tell us that we're not allowed to set it for
users:
# ALTER ROLE moo SET log_line_prefix = '%s';
ERROR: parameter "log_line_prefix" cannot be changed now
Might I propose an alternative error message for user-level
configuration changes that target parameters of level sighup and
above?
Perhaps something like:
ERROR: parameter "log_line_prefix" cannot be set at the user level.

I don't object in principle to having multiple phrasings of that
error message, but I do not see that "at the user level" is any
clearer than what we've got now. What's a "user level"?

Something along the line of "cannot be changed within individual
sessions" might work better, or maybe not. Let the bikeshedding
begin ...

regards, tom lane

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