Re: pgsql: Add pg_recvlogical, a tool to receive data logical decoding data

On 03/18/2014 06:26 PM, Robert Haas wrote:
> Add pg_recvlogical, a tool to receive data logical decoding data.
>
> This is fairly basic at the moment, but it's at least useful for
> testing and debugging, and possibly more.
>
> Andres Freund
>
> Branch
> ------
> master
>
> Details
> -------
> http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/8bdd12bbf093c846c9383c205e363d6ae35f11a6
>
> Modified Files
> --------------
> src/bin/pg_basebackup/.gitignore | 1 +
> src/bin/pg_basebackup/Makefile | 11 +-
> src/bin/pg_basebackup/nls.mk | 2 +-
> src/bin/pg_basebackup/pg_recvlogical.c | 978 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> src/bin/pg_basebackup/receivelog.c | 137 +----
> src/bin/pg_basebackup/receivelog.h | 2 +
> src/bin/pg_basebackup/streamutil.c | 119 +++-
> src/bin/pg_basebackup/streamutil.h | 10 +
> 8 files changed, 1135 insertions(+), 125 deletions(-)

I have a few questions about this:

1. Why is this in src/bin/pg_basebackup? As far as I can see, this has
nothing to do with taking base backups. I guess one could say the same
thing about pg_receivexlog, but that one is at least somewhat related to
a physical base backup, and shares code with pg_basebackup.

2. What is this good for? I would read the docs, but:

3. There are no docs.

It's a bit hard to be sure without understanding the purpose of this,
but I think this belongs in contrib, as an example of how to write a
logical decoding client. If it's only useful for "testing and debugging,
possibly more" as the commit message says, I don't think this should be
installed by default by "make install".

- Heikki