Re: Add exclusive backup deprecation notes to documentation

On Mon, Mar 18, 2019 at 1:33 PM Peter Eisentraut <
peter(dot)eisentraut(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> wrote:

> On 2019-03-07 10:33, David Steele wrote:
> > On 3/1/19 3:14 PM, Laurenz Albe wrote:
> I think it would be helpful to frame the documentation in a way to
> suggest that the nonexclusive mode is more for automation and more
> sophisticated tools and the exclusive mode is more for manual or simple
> scripted use.
>

But that would be factually incorrect and backwards, so it seems like a
terrible idea, at least when it comes to manual. If you are doing it
manually, it's a lot *easier* to do it right with the non-exclusive mode,
because you can easily keep one psql and one shell open. And that's safe.

The only real use case that has been put forward for the exclusive backup
mode is when the backups are done through a script, and that script is
limited to only use something like bash (and can't use a scripting language
like perl or python or powershell or other more advanced scripting
languages).

And I don't think exclusive mode should be suggested for "simple scripts"
either, since it's anything but -- scripts using the exclusive mode
correctly will be anything but simple. A better term there would be to
single out shellscripts, I'd suggest, if we want to single something out.
Or more generic, for "scripting languages incapable of keeping a connection
open across multiple lines" or something?

We can certainly keep it, but let's not tell people something is simple
when it's not.

If we do think that the exclusive mode will be removed in PG13, then I
> don't think we need further documentation changes. It already says it's
> deprecated, and we don't need to justify that at length. But again, I'm
> not convinced that that will happen.
>

But the complaints before was that the deprecation currently in the
documentation was not enough to remove it....

--
Magnus Hagander
Me: https://www.hagander.net/ <http://www.hagander.net/>
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