From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Andrew Gierth <andrew@tao11.riddles.org.uk>
cc: Justin Pryzby <pryzby@telsasoft.com>, pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org
Subject: Re: v12 and pg_restore -f-
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References: <20191006190839.GE18030@telsasoft.com>
 <28770.1570394593@sss.pgh.pa.us> <875zl11tla.fsf@news-spur.riddles.org.uk>
Comments: In-reply-to Andrew Gierth <andrew@tao11.riddles.org.uk>
	message dated "Sun, 06 Oct 2019 22:02:49 +0100"
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Date: Sun, 06 Oct 2019 17:15:24 -0400
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Andrew Gierth <andrew@tao11.riddles.org.uk> writes:
> "Tom" == Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> writes:
>  Tom> Perhaps we could change the back branches so that they interpret
>  Tom> "-f -" as "write to stdout", but without enforcing that you use
>  Tom> that syntax.

> We should definitely do that.

>  Tom> Alternatively, we could revert the v12 behavior change. On the
>  Tom> whole that might be the wiser course. I do not think the costs and
>  Tom> benefits of this change were all that carefully thought through.

> Failing to specify -d is a _really fricking common_ mistake for
> inexperienced users, who may not realize that the fact that they're
> seeing a ton of SQL on their terminal is not the normal result.
> Seriously, this comes up on a regular basis on IRC (which is why I
> suggested initially that we should do something about it).

No doubt, but that seems like a really poor excuse for breaking
maintenance scripts in a way that basically can't be fixed.  Even
with the change suggested above, scripts couldn't rely on "-f -"
working anytime soon, because you couldn't be sure whether a
back-rev pg_restore had the update or not.

The idea I'm leaning to after more thought is that we should change
*all* the branches to accept "-f -", but not throw an error if you
don't use it.  Several years from now, we could put the error back in;
but not until there's a plausible argument that nobody is running
old versions of pg_restore anymore.

			regards, tom lane