While the fact that you cannot do: [service_template] host=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
[service_db1] dbname=db1 service=service_template seems obvious there is nothing in the documentation that says this is prohibited; and attempting a simple alias entry: [realentry] user=not_system_user dbname=whatever [aliasentry] service=realentry psql "service=aliasentry" results in the error: FATAL: role "system-user" does not exist Version 9.3 SIDE NOTE: between the "FATAL:" and the word "role" are two spaces instead of what probably should be one. Anyway, http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.4/static/libpq-pgservice.html says that "[...] and the parameters are connection parameters; [...] and one of those parameters is "service" http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.4/static/libpq-connect.html#LIBPQ-PARAMKEYWORDS I would suggest: "connection parameters; see Section 31.1.2 for a list but note that you may not include the "service" parameter within the pg_service file (i.e., aliases are not allowed). Thoughts? David J. P.S. Any chance on actually making this work? The recent comment about "\c service=name" not working properly seems to fall into the same category so maybe fix them both at the same time - though the other issue is probably more of a bug while this is a feature request (unless the interplay is non-trivial)... I'm going to link to this post and add a comment to that thread.
