Re: wal_dump output on CREATE DATABASE

On Tue, 2018-11-13 at 12:24 -0800, Andres Freund wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On 2018-11-13 17:18:32 -0300, Alvaro Herrera wrote:
> > On 2018-Nov-13, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> >
> > > On 13/11/2018 18:53, Jean-Christophe Arnu wrote:
> > > > May I request any update on my (not so important) proposal ?
> > >
> > > Other opinions out there perhaps? I think your proposals are
> > > good, but
> > > I'm not sure to what extent people are automatically parsing the
> > > pg_waldump output and are relying on a particular fixed format.
>
> I personally don't care either way about this change. But:
>
> > While I've used pg_waldump a number of times to investigate various
> > problems, I have never written a script that would be broken by the
> > proposed changes. It seems the requirements vary every time.
>
> I'm not too concerned either. There's plenty change of the WAL
> contents across versions anyway. We shouldn't break things
> gratuitously, but we shouldn't hesitate to make the format better
> either.
>
> If somebody really wanted something that parses reasonably across
> versions I'd like to a) hear that usecase b) come up with an output
> format that's oriented towards that.
>

+1 to that

I do process pg_waldump output quite often, and IMHO it's more valuable
to produce consistently formatted output (for a given version) than try
maintaining cross-version compatibility at all costs.

regards

--
Tomas Vondra http://www.2ndQuadrant.com
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Remote DBA, Training & Services