Re: Re: [COMMITTERS] pgsql: Strengthen warnings about using pg_dump's -i option.

Tom Lane wrote:
> Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> writes:
> > Tom Lane wrote:
> >> My proposal would be to continue to accept the option but just ignore it
> >> (ie, error out on version mismatch whether or not -i is given).  This
> >> way we wouldn't break any scripts that use the option, but things would
> >> still be safe.
> 
> > A larger question is why the option was added in the first place.
> 
> It probably seemed like the conservative choice at the time: allow the
> user to be smarter than pg_dump when necessary.  What we couldn't have
> foreseen was the way the option has been abused by tools that are not as
> bright as they think they are.  With the current situation where -i is
> used by default, without the user's knowledge (and without showing him
> the warning messages, which is why your patch isn't going to improve
> matters), it just seems too dangerous to continue to accept the switch.
> 
> (I wonder whether some of the complaints we've seen about broken
> dump/restore are courtesy of pgAdmin forcing the dump to be taken with
> a too-old copy of pg_dump.)

Agreed, but I thought the tools have been fixed so is this still a
problem?

> One point after looking back at the previous discussion is that the
> current version test is too strict: it will complain if your server is
> 8.2.7 and pg_dump is 8.2.6.  We probably should not make a newer minor
> number a hard error, since 99.99% of the time it would be fine.  So
> while I think newer major should be a hard error regardless of -i,
> we could consider several responses to newer minor:
>     * silently allow it always
>     * print warning and proceed always
>     * allow -i to control error vs warning for this case only.

I think it should be silent.  Do we ever change the server behavior that
is visible to pg_dump in a minor release?

--  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>        http://momjian.us EnterpriseDB
http://postgres.enterprisedb.com
 + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +