Re: -f <output file> option for pg_dumpall

On Fri, Jan 05, 2007 at 08:05:26PM +0000, Dave Page wrote:
> Andreas Pflug wrote:
> >Dave Page wrote:
> >>In pgAdmin we use pg_dump's -f option to write backup files. The IO
> >>streams are redirected to display status and errors etc. in the GUI.
> >>
> >>In order to enhance the interface to allow backup of entire clusters as
> >>well as role and tablespace definitions, we need to be able to get
> >>pg_dumpall to write it's output directly to a file in the same way,
> >>because we cannot redirect the child pg_dump IO streams (which also
> >>means we may miss errors, but I need to think about that some more).
> >>
> >>As far as I can see, adding a -f option to pg_dumpall should be straight
> >>forward, the only issue being that we'd need to pass pg_dump an
> >>additional (undocumented?) option to tell it to append to the output
> >>file instead of writing it as normal.
> >>
> >>Any thoughts or better ideas?
> >>
> >Use pgAdmin's "create script" funcion on the server.
>
> We said long ago we weren't going to replicate pg_dump functionality in
> pgAdmin - a brief discussion on the pgadmin-hackers list earlier
> indicates that people still feel the same way, and that time would be
> better spend fixing pg_dump/pg_dumpall.

It might make sense to provide a programmatic interface to pg_dump to
provide tools like pgAdmin more flexibility. But it certainly doesn't
make sense to re-create the dumping logic.

In terms of integrating pg_dumpall and pg_dump; I don't really care if
that happens, but I would like to see pg_dumpall supporting all the
options that pg_dump does (a quick diff shows that pg_dumpall is
currently missing support for -f, -F, -v, -Z, -C (which may or may not
make sense), -E, -n & -t (might not make sense), -U and -W (probably
OK).
--
Jim Nasby jim(at)nasby(dot)net
EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com 512.569.9461 (cell)