Re: [HACKERS] pg_dump --comment?

Jon Jensen wrote:
> On Fri, 28 May 2004, Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote:
>
> > > I've encountered a situation where I'd like to store some information
> > > about the database when I do a pg_dump. For instance, the timestamp of
> > > the dump. And some other information that I pull from the database.
> >
> > I think every dump should dump the timestamp regardless...
>
> That would cause me a lot of trouble. Every night I do a pg_dump on all my
> databases to a temporary file. Then I use cmp to compare that dump to last
> night's dump. If they're identical I just delete the new dump so that only
> the old one remains, with its original timestamp. That way rsync doesn't
> see any change, and doesn't waste any time comparing it when we do
> backups. It's also handy to see the last day the dump changed by looking
> at the file's timestamp.
>
> Granted, this is only of interest on databases that don't change at all,
> but on a multi-user system we have a surprising number of databases that
> don't change at all for days (alongside the ones that change all the time,
> of course).
>
> However, I would like to see an option to include the timestamp if someone
> wants it.

The following patch adds start/stop times for pg_dump and pg_dumpall
when verbose output is selected:

--
-- PostgreSQL database cluster dump
-- Started on 2004-06-04 01:01:35 EDT
--

--
-- PostgreSQL database dump
-- Started on 2004-06-04 01:01:36 EDT
--

--
-- PostgreSQL database dump complete
-- Completed on 2004-06-04 01:01:36 EDT
--

--
-- PostgreSQL database cluster dump complete
-- Completed on 2004-06-04 01:01:36 EDT
--

--
Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us
pgman(at)candle(dot)pha(dot)pa(dot)us | (610) 359-1001
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