Re: clarification for pg_basebackup and major versions - Mailing list pgsql-docs
Hi, Team !
Thanks for your reply !
What I see in the fields is the lack of such simple supported/recommended/prerequisites notes/links in the official PostgreSQL documentation (pg_backup is just an example).
That might lead to further confusion for PostgreSQL users.
As an example pls. let me share the logical replication documentation https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/logical-replication.html which says:
'
...
- Replicating between different major versions of PostgreSQL.
- Replicating between PostgreSQL instances on different platforms (for example Linux to Windows)
- Replicating between PostgreSQL instances on different platforms (for example Linux to Windows)
...
'
I do believe something similar about pg_basebackup would be very welcome by PostgreSQL users.
best regards,
Alexey Shishkin
Alexey Shishkin Technical Account Manager EDB Software GmbH alexey.shishkin@enterprisedb.com
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On Mon, Jan 19, 2026 at 7:23 PM David G. Johnston <david.g.johnston@gmail.com> wrote:
On Monday, January 19, 2026, Alexey Shishkin <alexey.shishkin@enterprisedb.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 OSPlease 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.
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