Re: Postgres restart in the middle of exclusive backup and the presence of backup_label file

Greetings,

* David Steele (david@pgmasters.net) wrote:
> On 3/1/22 11:32, Nathan Bossart wrote:
> >On Tue, Mar 01, 2022 at 11:09:13AM -0500, Chapman Flack wrote:
> >>On 03/01/22 09:44, David Steele wrote:
> >>>Personally, I am in favor of removing it. We change/rename
> >>>functions/tables/views when we need to, and this happens in almost every
> >>>release.
> >>
> >>For clarification, is that a suggestion to remove the 'exclusive' parameter
> >>in some later release, after using this release to default it to false and
> >>reject calls with true?
> >
> >My suggestion was to remove it in v15.  My impression is that David and
> >Stephen agree, but I could be misinterpreting their responses.
>
> I agree and I'm pretty sure Stephen does as well.

Yes, +1 to removing it.

> >>That way, at least, there would be a period of time where procedures
> >>that currently work (by passing exclusive => false) would continue to work,
> >>and could be adapted as time permits by removing that argument, with no
> >>behavioral change.
> >
> >I'm not sure if there's any advantage to kicking the can down the road.  At
> >some point, we'll need to break existing backup scripts.  Will we be more
> >prepared to do that in v17 than we are now?  We could maintain two sets of
> >functions for a few releases and make it really clear in the documentation
> >that pg_start/stop_backup() are going to be removed soon (and always emit a
> >WARNING when they are used).  Would that address your concerns?
>
> I think people are going to complain no matter what. If scripts are being
> maintained changing the name is not a big deal (though moving from exclusive
> to non-exclusive may be). If they aren't being maintained then they'll just
> blow up a few versions down the road when we remove the compatibility
> functions.

I don't consider "maintained" and "still using the exclusive backup
method" to both be able to be true at the same time.

Thanks,

Stephen