Re: clarification for pg_basebackup and major versions

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

best regards,

Alexey Shishkin

[image: image.png]

*Alexey Shishkin*

Technical Account Manager

EDB Software GmbH

alexey(dot)shishkin(at)enterprisedb(dot)com

www.enterprisedb.com <https://enterprisedb.com/>

On Wed, Dec 31, 2025 at 2:34 PM David G. Johnston <
david(dot)g(dot)johnston(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:

>
>
> On Monday, December 29, 2025, PG Doc comments form <noreply(at)postgresql(dot)org>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> - to clarify how pg_basebackup works with servers of the same or older
>> major
>> version
>
>
> There is no “how”, it just does. The documentation is versioned and “it”
> means the binary produced by that version.
>
>
>> - to clearly specify pg_basebackup cannot be used for PostgreSQL major
>> version upgrade
>
>
> The page clearly states what a backup can be used for and upgrade is not
> listed.
>
> David J.
>
>