Re: pg_dumpall and version confusion

Tony Caduto wrote:
> Alvaro Herrera wrote:
>>
>> What's wrong with that? 8.2 will understand the GRANT ON SEQUENCE
>> without a problem.
>>
>>
> Yes, but 8.1 and earlier wont!
>
> If you dump a 8.1 database (with 8.2 pg_dump) and then use that dump to
> restore to another 8.1 server, any permissions on sequences will fail
> to restore because the 8.2 pg_dump can't handle NOT using GRANT ON
> SEQUENCE on the lower version of the server.
> Would it really be that big of a deal to add some logic to 8.2 pg_dump
> to say: Hey I am not dumping a 8.2 server, so don't use GRANT ON SEQUENCE?
>
> most Admin tools ship with the latest version of pg_dump and restore, so
> If I attempt to restore that dump via pgAdmin III (or other tools) which
> is using 8.2 versions of dump and restore it will fail on a 8.1 server.
>
> Do you see the point I am trying to make? Should admin tool vendors
> start shipping every version of pg_dump now?

This is a problem I've been thinking about on and off recently - and I
am starting to come to the conclusion that shipping each version of the
utilities is the only way things are likely to work unless someone puts
some really significant effort into adding backwards compatibility modes
to pg_dump (which I imagine is likely to meet resistance if offered as a
patch anyway).

That will be a real PITA though - we already have a bunch of code in
pgAdmin to find just the current versions of PostgreSQL's and EDB's
pg_dump et al. (yes, they are different), nevermind having to do it
right back to 7.3 which is the earliest version we currently support.

The other issue will be having to ship multiple copies of libpq and
supporting libraries for each version :-(

For the moment though, our SVN trunk code will allow you to override the
paths to the PostgreSQL and EnterpriseDB utilities, so you can point
pgAdmin at the appropriate verion for your server.

Regards, Dave