Re: Remove Deprecated Exclusive Backup Mode

Greetings,

* Christophe Pettus (xof@thebuild.com) wrote:
> > On Feb 22, 2019, at 15:18, Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net> wrote:
> > Getting a solid and resiliant backup to work from a shell script is, imv
> > anyway (though I might have a bit of experience, having tried numerous
> > times myself and then realizing that it just isn't practical...), a
> > downright fool's errand.
> 
> The reality, though, is that there are a lot of organizations who have invested time and effort into getting a backup strategy working using the existing APIs, and there will be quite a bit of pushback against the version in which the existing exclusive API is removed.

Do they realize how that existing backup strategy is flawed?  I doubt
it, and when they discover how it's broken, I don't think they're going
to be thanking us for letting them continue to use it.

> Some of those will be able to move to non-exclusive backups easily; others won't.  For the ones that can't move easily, the reaction will not be, "PostgreSQL version x has a safer backup API"; it will be "PostgreSQL version x broke our backups, so we're not upgrading to it."

We don't cater to this line of argument when it comes to breaking
changes in the backend, or when we break monitoring scripts, and I don't
see a reason why we should do so here.  They aren't required to upgrade
immediately- we provide 5 *years* of support for major versions which we
release, and we're going to give advance warning of this change that's
even beyond that 5 years.  I have essentially zero sympathy for
organizations which refuse to allocate even the bit of time necessary to
address this change for over 5+ years.

> Rather than deprecate the existing API, I'd rather see the documentation updated to discuss the danger cases.

Ok, then please do so, and please be prepared to continue to maintain
the documentation of both methods moving forward, because others have
tried and have (rightfully, in my opinion) decided that it's frankly not
worth the effort and ultimately just terribly confusing for users that
we have these two different backup methods and even just updating the
documentation for one or the other is downright painful (to the point
that people litterally give up on it).  That really isn't a good place
to be in.

Thanks!

Stephen