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From: Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 7 Feb 2026 08:04:32 -0500
Message-ID: <CA+TgmoZtUFDefYG5FPB8wUQn4BDwh1aQGmE-duQghPM2M+iJbA@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: pg_waldump: support decoding of WAL inside tarfile
To: Amul Sul <sulamul@gmail.com>
Cc: Euler Taveira <euler@eulerto.com>, Chao Li <li.evan.chao@gmail.com>, 
	Jakub Wartak <jakub.wartak@enterprisedb.com>, 
	PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>
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On Wed, Feb 4, 2026 at 8:53=E2=80=AFAM Amul Sul <sulamul@gmail.com> wrote:
> > 0008. I'm concerned about this patch. It is breaking backward compatibi=
lity if
> > you are using a long option (--wal-directory). Your proposal is a gener=
ic word
> > that represents both cases (file and directory). I agree. However, I wo=
uldn't
> > remove --wal-directory from the tool. Instead, I would keep it with the=
 same
> > short option ('w') but add a sentence saying this long option is deprec=
ated and
> > will be removed in the future or even remove any traces of this long op=
tion
> > from the help and documentation but silently accept the old long option=
. I
> > prefer the latter because it is not a required argument so a deprecatio=
n
> > warning is not necessary IMO.
>
> Yeah, that was discussed with Robert offline and we believe that it is
> better to make it more generalized; since we can now use the same
> option to accept both wal-directory and wal-archived. pg_waldump has
> much more generic options for the same, such as -- path=3DPATH.

Of course, the fact that we discussed it doesn't mean that the issue
is completely settled. However, I don't think there would be general
support from other people on the project for the idea of getting rid
of the long option entirely, or even just the documentation for it. We
have long options for almost all short options these days, and I agree
with that as a general practice. Sometimes we have ONLY a long option,
but we very rarely have ONLY a short option, which is good because
sometimes we have tools with too many options for it to be viable to
give everything a short option, and the long options really help to
make things more self-documenting.

What I would consider a more viable option is to not do the rename and
leave this as --wal-directory even though the argument could really be
a directory or a file. That would avoid the backward compatibility
break that is troubling Euler. And, you could argue that a tar file is
enough like a directory that it won't really cause much confusion.
Personally, I favor renaming it. I think the number of people using
pg_waldump is fairly small, and the number of those people who are
using the long form of the option is very small. Hence, I don't
believe think the rename will inconvenience many users, and I think it
will improve clarity for future users. But, Euler (or someone else)
might take the opposite viewpoint.

--=20
Robert Haas
EDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com