pg_dump is not backwards compatible in PG12 - Mailing list pgsql-bugs

From Vera Gangeskar Johne
Subject pg_dump is not backwards compatible in PG12
Date
Msg-id CAPAx+ExTJukgwJME7q+p=brk8mxLZ=RJT29TkqYpoFz+1UpKkA@mail.gmail.com
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Responses Re: pg_dump is not backwards compatible in PG12  (Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>)
List pgsql-bugs
PG 12 bumped the pg_backup_archiver version to 1.14, however this version is not supported in past versions of pg_backup_archiver, resulting in restores to earlier versions not working.

- Supported pg_backup_archiver versions in 12: https://github.com/postgres/postgres/blob/REL_12_0/src/bin/pg_dump/pg_backup_archiver.h#L77-L103

The following steps will reproduce the error:
1. pg_dump on a 12.1 database
2. pg_restore to a postgres db on a version < 12 (in my case 9.6).  The error: `pg_restore: [archiver] unsupported version (1.14) in file header`

Questions/observations:
1. Is it expected that pg_dump will produce backwards incompatible dumps? If so, is this documented somewhere?
2. The release notes don't mention this at all as far as I could see. Should they?
3. Should this be a bug? This is the first backwards incompatibility in pg_dump (that I can see) since 9.6

Thanks,
Vera Johne

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