Hello
We have lists of backend types scattered through the tree. I found two
current ones, and Euler Taveira wants to add a couple more[1]. His
patch is actually blocked on not adding more, so this seems worth doing.
Bikeshedding welcome (for a limited time).
[1] https://postgr.es/m/313aa202-b5fa-4e3f-95d0-83425575c66d@app.fastmail.com
A couple points. First, launch_backend.c has its own strings for
process names, inconsistent with the ones in miscinit.c. I think we
should ignore the ones in launch_backend.c, because they're less
polished and not used for anything interesting, whereas the ones in
miscinit.c::GetBackendTypeDesc() are -- particularly init_ps_display and
pg_stat_activity.
Second, in discussion [2] leading to commit 18d67a8d7d30 (Nov 2024) it
was agreed to add support for translating backend type descriptions.
I'm not really sure that this is useful. It would be, if set_ps_display
and pg_stat_activity used translated names, so that you could match what
log messages say with what the process lists show. But I think we've
historically not translated those. We have a few translatable strings
as the argument of HandleChildCrash() in postmaster.c, but those are
using names that are yet a third source of strings; I'm not a fan of
this. (For staters, if a translation decided to use non-ascii chars for
process names, would that work okay in set_ps_display? I bet it
wouldn't, because that's using strlen()). So I would propose to rewind
a bit here, and remove translation from all those places so that the
output is consistent (== usable) between log messages and ps/pg_stat_activity.
[2] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/a102f15f-eac4-4ff2-af02-f9ff209ec66f%40iki.fi
Third, I didn't do it here, but HandleChildCrash is currently called
like
HandleChildCrash(pid, exitstatus,
_("WAL writer process"));
creating yet another source of strings to describe process types.
I think it would be much better to avoid that by using
HandleChildCrash(pid, exitstatus,
_(GetBackendTypeDesc(B_WAL_WRITER));
instead. If we decide to get rid of the translation, then
HandleChildCrash(pid, exitstatus,
GetBackendTypeDesc(B_WAL_WRITER);
This last one would be my preference actually. Note that we use this
string in an error that looks like this (LogChildExit):
/*------
translator: %s is a noun phrase describing a child process, such as
"server process" */
(errmsg("%s (PID %d) exited with exit code %d",
procname, pid, WEXITSTATUS(exitstatus)),
I would change this to
errmsg("process %d of type \"%s\" exited with exit code %d",
pid, procname, WEXITSTATUS())
Note that in the original, the process name is translated, and in my
proposal it wouldn't be. (This helps match the log message with "ps"
and pg_stat_activity).
Fourth: patch 0002 is a necessary hack to get the proctype_list.h
strings be picked up for translation by gettext in makefiles. It's
quite ugly! I'd rather not have it at all. I have no idea how to do
this in Meson.
--
Álvaro Herrera Breisgau, Deutschland — https://www.EnterpriseDB.com/
"I dream about dreams about dreams", sang the nightingale
under the pale moon (Sandman)
