Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2025 09:21:41 -0700
From: Noah Misch <noah@leadboat.com>
To: Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net>
Cc: Mahendra Singh Thalor <mahi6run@gmail.com>,
	=?iso-8859-1?Q?=C1lvaro?= Herrera <alvherre@alvh.no-ip.org>,
	jian he <jian.universality@gmail.com>,
	Srinath Reddy <srinath2133@gmail.com>,
	pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org
Subject: Re: Non-text mode for pg_dumpall
Message-ID: <20250725162141.6f.nmisch@google.com>
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On Thu, Jul 24, 2025 at 04:33:15PM -0400, Andrew Dunstan wrote:
> On 2025-07-21 Mo 8:53 PM, Noah Misch wrote:
> > I suspect this is going to end with a structured dump like we use on the
> > pg_dump (per-database) side.  It's not an accident that v17 pg_restore doesn't
> > lex text files to do its job.  pg_dumpall deals with a more-limited set of
> > statements than pg_dump deals with, but they're not _that much_ more limited.
> > I won't veto a lexing-based approach if it gets the behaviors right, but I
> > don't have high hopes for it getting the behaviors right and staying that way.
> 
> I have been talking offline with Mahendra about this. I agree that we would
> be better off with a structured object for globals. But the thing that's
> been striking me all afternoon as I have pondered it is that we should not
> be designing such an animal at this stage of the cycle. Whatever we do we're
> going to be stuck supporting, so I have very reluctantly come to the
> conclusion that it would probably be better to back the feature out and have
> another go for PG 19.

That makes sense to me.  It would be quite a sprint to get this done in time,
and that wouldn't leave much room for additional testing and feedback before
the final release.  I agree with the reluctance and with the conclusion.