Getting started with postgres.app for Django application development

Question

I'm a newbie trying to get started with postgres.app. I want to make sure I'm laying the proper foundation for the eventual deployment of a Django application to Heroku.

I've followed the steps in the postgres.app documentation but have a few additional questions:

1. In my development environment (on a personal osx machine) is it okay to have the Django application connect to the database as the default/root user ($USER) without a password?

2. If I wanted to set up a password for the default/root user, how should I go about doing so? I've attempted ALTER USER [username] with password '[password]'; and modifying ~/Library/Containers/com.heroku.postgres/Data/Library/Application Support/Postgres/var/pg_hba.conf with no success: entering psql in the terminal still provides unauthenticated access to the postgres shell.

3. What is the correct way to connect to the postgres.app server with pgAdmin. My current setup is as follows. I suppose I'm mostly concerned with whether the Maintenance DB setting is correct:

   Name: development
   Host: localhost
   Port: 5432
   Maintenance DB: [$USER]        # i.e., "joe"... should this be "postgres" instead?
   Username: [$USER]
   Password:

Many thanks, and any additional advice is always appreciated!

Answer 1

1. I don't think OS X has a root user per se. Semantics aside, yes it is ok to connect under your username. By default this role will not have superuser privileges. If you need to make superuser type changes (adding/dropping databases, granting access, those kinds of things), the customary way to do this is to use su postgres to switch users to the entitled user, then use psql.

2. By default, postgres uses unix usernames for authentication. If you want to use username/passwords instead you need to change settings in pg_hba.conf per my answer here.

3. I am not very familiar with pgAdmin--wish I could help.