Re: pg_waldump: support decoding of WAL inside tarfile

On 2026-03-20 Fr 9:26 AM, Amul Sul wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 20, 2026 at 5:01 PM Amul Sul <sulamul(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>> On Fri, Mar 20, 2026 at 2:18 AM Zsolt Parragi <zsolt(dot)parragi(at)percona(dot)com> wrote:
>>> Hello!
>>>
>>> Path is ignored with a positional argument, I think this is a bug?
>>>
>>> This fails:
>>>
>>> pg_waldump --path /wal/dir 000000010000000000000001
>>>
>>> And this works:
>>>
>>> pg_waldump --path /wal/dir --start 0/01000028 --end 0/010020F8
>>>
>> Good catch! I've fixed this in the attached version and updated a test
>> case to cover this scenario.
>>
>>> +{
>>> + int fname_len = strlen(fname);
>>> +
>>>
>>> Shouldn't this use size_t?
>>>
>> Okay, that can be used. I’ve done the same in the attached version.
>>
>>> + /*
>>> + * Setup temporary directory to store WAL segments and set up an exit
>>> + * callback to remove it upon completion.
>>> + */
>>> + setup_tmpwal_dir(waldir);
>>>
>>> Maybe this could be deferred to be created only on first use? If I
>>> understand correctly, in a typical scenario waldump won't use this
>>> temporary directory, yet it always creates it.
>> Yeah, that optimization can be done, but passing the waldir -- which
>> is only used once -- to the point where the first temp file is created
>> would require quite a bit of code refactoring that doesn't seem to
>> offer much gain, IMO.
>>
> Since Andrew also leans toward creating the directory only when
> needed, I have reconsidered the approach. I think we can pass waldir
> (the archive directory) via XLogDumpPrivate, and I’ve implemented that
> in the attached version.
>

Thanks, committed with very minor tweaks.

cheers

andrew

--
Andrew Dunstan
EDB: https://www.enterprisedb.com