Re: pg_basebackup and replication slots

On 7/29/15 8:00 AM, Andres Freund wrote:
> As far as I understand this subthread the goal is to have a
> pg_basebackup that internally creates a slot, so it can guarantee that
> all the required WAL is present till streamed out by -X
> stream/fetch. The problem with just creating a slot is that it'd "leak"
> if pg_basebackup is killed, or the connection breaks.  The idea with the
> ephemeral slot is that it'd automatically kept alive until the base
> backup is complete, but would also automatically be dropped if the base
> backup fails.

I don't think anyone actually said that.  I think the goal was to add
the functionality that pg_basebackup can optionally create a
(persistent) replication slot, both for its own use and for later use by
streaming.  Just so you don't have to call pg_create...slot() or
pg_receivexlog separately to create the slot.  And it was pointed out
that this created slot would need to be removed if pg_basebackup failed
for some reason.

What you describe also seems useful, but is a different sub-issue.