Re: pg_basebackup for streaming base backups

On lör, 2011-01-15 at 19:10 +0100, Magnus Hagander wrote:
> This patch creates pg_basebackup in bin/, being a client program for
> the streaming base backup feature.
>
> I think it's more or less done now. I've again split it out of
> pg_streamrecv, because it had very little shared code with that
> (basically just the PQconnectdb() wrapper).
>
> One thing I'm thinking about - right now the tool just takes -c
> <conninfo> to connect to the database. Should it instead be taught to
> take the connection parameters that for example pg_dump does - one for
> each of host, port, user, password? (shouldn't be hard to do..)

Probably yes, for consistency. I have been thinking for a while,
however, that it would be very good if the tools also supported a
conninfo string, so you don't have to invent a new option for every new
connection option. psql already supports that.

Some other comments:

I had trouble at first interpreting the documentation. In particular,
where does the data come from, and where does it go to? -d speaks of
restoring, but I was just looking for making a backup, not restoring it.
Needs some clarification, and some complete examples. Also what happens
if -c, or -d and -t are omitted.

Downthread you say that this tool is also useful for making base backups
independent of replication functionality. Sounds good. But then the
documentation says that the connection must be with a user that has the
replication permission. Something is conceptually wrong here: why would
I have to grant replication permission just to take a base backup for
the purpose of making a backup?