Re: Changing pg_dump default file format

On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 8:26 AM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:

> Magnus Hagander <magnus(at)hagander(dot)net> writes:
> > On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 5:02 PM, Joshua D. Drake <jd(at)commandprompt(dot)com>
> wrote:
> >> I humbly request on behalf of those who manage production postgresql
> >> instances that we change the default backup file format from -Fp to -Fc.
>
> > I'm a bit worried about it breaking peoples scripts as well, if they
> > pipe the output.
>
> Whether they pipe the output or not, this will break people's scripts.
> I agree it's a legacy behavior that we wouldn't choose again, but you
> could say that about an awful lot of things including much of the SQL
> standard. I think it's too late to consider this now.
>

Just a thought: If it's the right thing to do, why not do it in small
steps?
For example, couldn't we deprecate the behavior on 9.4, and switch over in
9.5? By deprecate I mean a warning message on STDERR making it clear
they're relying on behavior that is scheduled to change.

I don't think there's any precedence in postgres or it's tooling of this
kind of
deprecation process, but it seems we need to define something like it.

Thoughts?

-H