Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> writes:
> Perhaps there could be some sort of /etc/postgresql.conf file that is read
> by both client and server that can control these sort of aspects.
Maybe ... but it seems to me that still leaves us with the issue of
a single pathname that must be known a-priori to both client and server.
You've just changed that path from "/tmp/..." to "/etc/...".
Moreover, such a setup would make it substantially more painful to run
multiple versions of Postgres on a single machine. Right now, as long
as each version has a different default port number, it works great.
Try to put the default port number in /etc/postgresql.conf, and you've
got a problem.
regards, tom lane