Re: Deprecating, and scheduling removal of, pg_dump's tar format.

Greetings,

* Christophe Pettus (xof(at)thebuild(dot)com) wrote:
> > On Jul 26, 2018, at 19:35, Peter Geoghegan <pg(at)bowt(dot)ie> wrote:
> >
> > Why, specifically, would it make them unhappy?
>
> Forensic and archive backups in .tar format (which I know of users doing) would require a two-step restore process on newer versions.

Do you, perhaps, have any insight into why those users are currently
using the .tar format?

The use of temp files strikes me as a particularly good reason to do
away with that format as it can cause odd failure cases.

The other downside is that it's just more testing to be done to make
sure that we didn't break it, testing which every developer waits for
whenever they run the test suite. Further, any changes in pg_dump that
could possibly impact the tar format also need to have tests written for
them to make sure that this particular format, that has no real
advantages or redeeming qualities over the other formats, continues to
work.

Thanks!

Stephen