Re: some pg_dump query code simplification

Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net> writes:
> * Tom Lane (tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us) wrote:
>> Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net> writes:
>>> I wonder- what if we had an option to pg_dump to explicitly tell it what
>>> the server's version is and then have TAP tests to run with different
>>> versions?

>> Uh ... telling it what the version is doesn't make that true, so I'd
>> have no confidence in a test^H^H^H^Hkluge done that way.  The way
>> to test is to point it at an *actual* back-branch server.

> I certainly agree that this would be ideal, but nonetheless, I've seen
> multiple cases where just trying to run the query, even against a
> current version, would have shown that it's malformed or has some issue
> which needs fixing and today we haven't even got that.

Yeah, but cases where we need to touch column C in one version and column
D in another can't be made to pass when pg_dump is operating under a false
assumption about the server version.  So this seems like a nonstarter.

            regards, tom lane