Re: -f <output file> option for pg_dumpall

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?
>
>

This seems a bit like piecemeal reform. Here are some things I'd like to
see that affect this area:

. merge pg_dump and pg_dumpall (e.g. add a flag to pg_dump that says do
the lot)
. multi-db non-text dumps

And while we're about it, can we teach pg_restore to handle text dumps?
Even if it just transparently called psql it would be nice.

cheers

andrew