Re: [HACKERS] Still having trouble importing 6.3 DB

Bruce Momjian <maillist(at)candle(dot)pha(dot)pa(dot)us> writes:
>> Memo to hackers: we need a better way of coping with cross-version
>> changes that affect dump scripts...

> Not sure how to deal with that one.

I don't have any good general-purpose answers either, but I can think
of one thing we probably oughta do: seems to me that using a direct
copy to a system table is just asking for cross-version trouble.
pg_dumpall ought to create users using the CREATE USER command, not
by copy to pg_shadow, don't you think?

I don't mind pg_dumpall doing a select from pg_shadow in order to get
the info; that should be OK on the premise that the dump utility will be
run against a database of the same version as the utility itself. The
thing not to assume is that the output script will be reloaded into
exactly the same version of Postgres.

regards, tom lane