Re: Remove Deprecated Exclusive Backup Mode

Greetings,

* Robert Haas (robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com) wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 22, 2019 at 6:18 PM Stephen Frost <sfrost(at)snowman(dot)net> wrote:
> > What we need is a backup tool included in core that users feel
> > comfortable using instead of trying to write their own.
>
> I agree. That's a great idea. Let's talk about how to make that
> happen. Providing a tool that gives people MORE AND BETTER options
> than what they have today is likely to make users more happy.

I've been working for years on making this happen, and am currently
putting quite a large amount of resources into what I hope will be the
final step in the process to get a solution that will have a great many
more and better options than what's available today. Maybe it'll end up
happening, which I think would be great, maybe it won't, which would be
sad, but at least we'll have tried.

> Removing an option that people are currently using, and which they
> find better than other available options for reasons with which I
> understand that you disagree, will make users more sad. Happy is
> better.

I don't want to see more users stumbling over the issues with the
exclusive backup interface. A better interface exists, and has existed
since 9.6. The exclusive backup method was deprecated in 2016. One of
the really bad things about the exclusive backup method is that it
*looks* like it works well and that there aren't any issues with it, but
when users hit the issues, they get very sad. We might have 1000s of
happy users who never run into those issues and therefore don't want to
see us change anything, but what about the 10s or 100s of users who do
hit those issues, what do we tell them? Seems like we're saying "well,
sorry, we knew those issues existed and it's unfortunate you hit them,
but there's this better thing that you *should* have been using and then
you wouldn't have hit those issues." That doesn't seem likely to make
people happy with us.

Thanks!

Stephen