Re: Return codes for archive and restore commands

Greetings,

* Michael Paquier (michael(at)paquier(dot)xyz) wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 28, 2018 at 10:27:31PM -0500, Stephen Frost wrote:
> > Yes, it couldn't be exactly the same as a generic background worker,
> > that's a good point. We definitely need to make sure that the
> > postmaster waits for the archiver to shut down, as it does for the WAL
> > senders.
>
> Just to be clear, please note I don't think that what removing the
> archiver code from the core code is a bad idea, quite the contrary
> actually. But I doubt that it would be acceptable to rip off this code
> without something which has the same properties and guarantees for any
> users depending on it. And archive_command is used a lot.

Yes, it's used a lot and I tend to agree that we'll need to have
something which replaces it- at least for a while, but we shouldn't let
the fact that it's used a lot (because it's the only option in many
ways...) lead us to think it's actually a good interface which should be
kept forever. We're growing up here and realizing that the initial
implementations of things around the edges of the core system, while
used extensively, need to be updated to be reliable and resilient and
the previous unreliable interfaces need to be deprecated and eventually
removed, for the benefit of all of our users who might otherwise think
they are as reliable as we all wish that had been when they were
initially implemented.

Thanks!

Stephen