On Mon, Aug 29, 2005 at 08:12:37AM -0400, Robert Treat wrote: > On Monday 29 August 2005 00:33, Tom Lane wrote: > > David Fetter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > On a slightly related note, I've noticed that psql isn't > > > backward compatible. > > > > We have never expected psql's \d commands to work against older > > server versions, and two months after feature freeze isn't the > > time to start making that happen.
Tom, good point on the timing. I wish I'd come up with this at a better moment for 8.1. I still contend that this falls squarely in the realm of bug fixes, and would be happy to get as backward-compatible a bunch of \ functions as possible, even back-porting, little as I believe that should be encouraged. > That said, number of folks have looked at this problem and agree it > would be nice to do, they just haven't formed a consensus on how to > do it. If you have a plan for how you would want to approach this > in 8.2, feel free to post it. I'd be curious as to what's been proposed before, but briefly: switch (pset.sversion/100) { case 801: ... break; case 800: ... break; . . . default: ... break; } for each version-specific chunk of SQL that a backslash command would issue. I know it makes the code bigger, but stacking things that way makes it relatively easy to prepend new conditions at the top as needed. Also TBD, I think it would be a Very Good Idea(TM) to see about how this (and other front ends) can play nice with the newsysviews project. It really chaps me to see all these wheels being reinvented. :/ Cheers, D -- David Fetter [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://fetter.org/ phone: +1 510 893 6100 mobile: +1 415 235 3778 Remember to vote! ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 9: In versions below 8.0, the planner will ignore your desire to choose an index scan if your joining column's datatypes do not match