On Fri, Nov 14, 2014 at 1:15 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> Generally I'd be in favor of avoiding platform-dependent code where
> possible, but that doesn't represent a YES vote for this particular
> patch. It looks pretty messy in a quick look, even granting that the
> #ifdef WIN32's would all go away.
Hmm, OK. I have not read the patch. Hopefully that's something that
could be fixed.
> A larger question here is about forward/backward compatibility of the
> basebackup files. Changing the representation of symlinks like this
> would break that. Maybe we don't care, not sure (is there already a
> catversion check for these things?). Changing the file format for only
> some platforms seems like definitely a bad idea though.
What are the practical consequences of changing the file format? I
think that an old backup containing symlinks could be made to work on
a new server that knows how to create them, and we should probably
design it that way, but a physical backup isn't compatible across
major versions anyway, so it doesn't have the same kinds of
repercussions as changing something like the pg_dump file format.
--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company
