Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2024 09:14:08 -0500
From: Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com>
To: Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net>
Cc: PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: Non-text mode for pg_dumpall
Message-ID: <ZmcKMF61K4Ck51dK@nathan>
References: <cb103623-8ee6-4ba5-a2c9-f32e3a4933fa@dunslane.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
In-Reply-To: <cb103623-8ee6-4ba5-a2c9-f32e3a4933fa@dunslane.net>
Archived-At: <https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/ZmcKMF61K4Ck51dK%40nathan>
Precedence: bulk

On Mon, Jun 10, 2024 at 08:58:49AM -0400, Andrew Dunstan wrote:
> Tom and Nathan opined recently that providing for non-text mode for
> pg_dumpall would be a Good Thing (TM). Not having it has been a
> long-standing complaint, so I've decided to give it a go.

Thank you!

> I think we would need to restrict it to directory mode, at least to begin
> with. I would have a toc.dat with a different magic block (say "PGGLO"
> instead of "PGDMP") containing the global entries (roles, tablespaces,
> databases). Then for each database there would be a subdirectory (named for
> its toc entry) with a standard directory mode dump for that database. These
> could be generated in parallel (possibly by pg_dumpall calling pg_dump for
> each database). pg_restore on detecting a global type toc.data would restore
> the globals and then each of the databases (again possibly in parallel).

I'm curious why we couldn't also support the "custom" format.

> Following that I would turn my attention to using it in pg_upgrade.

+1

-- 
nathan