Re: clarification for pg_basebackup and major versions

On Monday, January 19, 2026, Alexey Shishkin <
alexey(dot)shishkin(at)enterprisedb(dot)com> wrote:

> Hi, Team !
>
> Some more clarification about pg_basebackup which should be available in
> the documentation:
>
> - if pg_basebackup works between different versions of the same OS (ex.
> RHEL8 and RHEL9)
> - if pg_basebackup works between different types of OS Linux (ex. RHEL10
> and Debian13) or OS Windows (ex. Windows 2016 and Windows 2019)
> - if pg_basebackup works between different types of OS (ex. Ubuntu 24.04
> and Windows 2022)
> - if pg_basebackup works between different platforms (ex. Linux on amd64
> and Linux on arm64)
> - if pg_basebackup works between 32-bit OS and 64-bit OS
>
>>
>>
Please don’t top-post.

I agree this these dynamics aren’t readily exposed in the documentation. I
disagree that pg_basebackup should be considered as an authoritative
location for covering the material. It would simply link to such a
location in notes or “see also”.

In short, though, it like pretty much any client program will function
correctly regardless of differences with the server. But a physical backup
is only truly promised to work if the environment that is processing the
data matches the environment that produced the data.

David J.