Re: documenting the backup manifest file format

On 5/15/20 9:34 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
> Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> writes:
>> It's a good question. My inclination was to think that GMT would be
>> the clearest thing, but I also didn't realize that the result would
>> thus be inconsistent with backup_label. Not sure what's best here.
> 
> I vote for following the backup_label precedent; that's stood for quite
> some years now.

I'd rather keep it GMT. The timestamps in the backup label are purely 
informational, but the timestamps in the manifest are useful, e.g. to 
set the mtime on a restore to the original value.

Forcing the user to do timezone conversions is prone to error. Some 
languages, like C, simply aren't good at it.

Of course, my actual preference is to use epoch time which is easy to 
work with and eliminates the possibility of conversion errors. It is 
also compact.

Regards,
-- 
-David
david@pgmasters.net