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The behavior of something like ALTER TABLE transactions ADD COLUMN status varchar(30) DEFAULT 'old', ALTER COLUMN status SET default 'current'; is to fill existing table rows with 'old', not 'current'. That's intentional and desirable for a couple of reasons: * It makes the behavior the same whether you merge the sub-commands into one ALTER command or give them separately; * If we applied the new default while filling the table, there would be no way to get the existing behavior in one SQL command. The same reasoning applies in cases that add a column and then manipulate its GENERATED/IDENTITY status in a second sub-command, since the generation expression is really just a kind of default. However, that wasn't very obvious (at least not to me; earlier in the referenced discussion thread I'd thought it was a bug to be fixed). And it certainly wasn't documented. Hence, add documentation, code comments, and a test case to clarify that this behavior is all intentional. In passing, adjust ATExecAddColumn's defaults-related relkind check so that it matches up exactly with ATRewriteTables, instead of being effectively (though not literally) the negated inverse condition. The reasoning can be explained a lot more concisely that way, too (not to mention that the comment now matches the code, which it did not before). Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/10365.1558909428@sss.pgh.pa.us