Re: Major upgrade of PostgreSQL and MySQL

On 12/09/2013 18:16, Karl Denninger wrote:
>
> On 9/12/2013 11:11 AM, Patrick Dung wrote:
>> While reading some manual of PostgreSQL and MySQL (eg.
>> http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/upgrading-from-previous-series.html)
>>
>> I have found that MySQL has stated many incompatibilities and know
>> issues (a long list) in the MySQL version 5.0, 5.1, 5.5, 5.6 and 5.7.
>>
>> For PostgreSQL, it seems I can't find the list (it just say see the
>> Appendix E / release notes).
>> I think it is a plus for PostgreSQL if it has few incompatibilities
>> between major versions.
>>
>> By the way, for in-place major version upgrade (not dumping DB and
>> import again), MySQL is doing a better job in here.
>>
>> Please share your thought, thanks.
>>
> pg_upgrade will do an in-place upgrade if you wish. It is somewhat
> risky if not done using a COPY (it can either copy or not, as you wish)
> but it's considerably faster than a dump/restore and is "in-place."
>
> I use it regularly.

If I read the documentation correctly
(http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.3/static/pgupgrade.html) it needs
oldbindir and newbindir arguments pointing to the directories of
PostgreSQL executables for the old and new versions, making it basically
unusable for upgrading systems which are maintained with packages
instead of individually compiling & installing custom versions of
PostgreSQL, right? (except possibly Debian which may allow multiple pg
versions to be installed, I haven't tried it).