Re: Fixing pg_dump

Christopher Kings-Lynne <chriskl(at)familyhealth(dot)com(dot)au> writes:
> Actually, this brings up another point - people occasionally complain on
> the list that pg_dump is not considered important enough :( ie. Is
> there any good reason we cannot backport the entire new pg_dump to the
> 7.4 branch, and change the 3 small things that prevent its output
> restoring to 7.4.

Lack of testing. Maybe after 7.5 has been out for a while, we'll have
enough trust in current pg_dump to think of doing that, but on the other
hand it would be somewhat moot at that point. The main point though is
that 7.4 is supposed to be a *stable* branch, and dropping a rewritten
pg_dump that hasn't even been through beta yet into a stable branch is
Simply Not Done.

> * Drop commands for TYPEs have 'CASCADE' on the end (has that always
> been true)

Yeek. That's got to be a hangover from pre-dependency-chasing days.
Let's lose it in our current output, at least.

> * I currently assume that the last two characters in a drop command are
> ; and \n. I'm not sure if this has always been the case. Maybe I
> should make it loop until it removes the trailing semi-colon.

I'd go for "remove while the last char is either ; or \n"; should cover
all cases.

regards, tom lane