On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 3:16 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> writes:
>> I can't shake the feeling that this is about a couple
>> of PostgreSQL hackers (yourself included) not wanting to type \dfS or
>> \dfA or something to get the behavior they currently get with \df. If
>> that's the case, come off it, because there's lots of evidence on this
>> thread (and in all likelihood elsewhere) that this behavior is not
>> what end-users want.
>
> As was made clear at the beginning of the thread, that's what they
> *think* they want, without any experience with a system that actually
> behaves that way. And yes I do believe I know better, both from knowing
> how the system works and from actual experience with the ill-considered
> patch that's now in HEAD. I'm willing to provide a "U" modifier but
> I think it will be a serious error to make that the default behavior.
1. Providing the U modifier is a step in the right direction.
2. I agree that developers sometimes know better than users what users
actually want. I have a pretty good track record there myself.
3. On this thread, we have you, Peter Eisentraut, and Heikki
Linnakangas arguing for reverting the default behavior of \df, and we
have (by my tally, apologies to anyone I've missed or misrepresented)
Greg Sabino Mullane, Josh Berkus, Josh Drake, Greg Stark, David
Fetter, Dmitri Fontaine, Stephen Frost, and myself expressing support
for the change (with various differences of opinion on what other
alternatives might not or might not be better). So in this case I
think you don't know better.
However, by my count, zero of the people who like the change are
committers and all of the people who don't like it are, so we may be
out of luck. :-)
...Robert
