On Mon, Jun 10, 2024 at 08:58:49AM -0400, Andrew Dunstan wrote: > Tom and Nathan opined recently that providing for non-text mode for > pg_dumpall would be a Good Thing (TM). Not having it has been a > long-standing complaint, so I've decided to give it a go.
Thank you!
Indeed, this has been quite annoying!
> I think we would need to restrict it to directory mode, at least to begin > with. I would have a toc.dat with a different magic block (say "PGGLO" > instead of "PGDMP") containing the global entries (roles, tablespaces, > databases). Then for each database there would be a subdirectory (named for > its toc entry) with a standard directory mode dump for that database. These > could be generated in parallel (possibly by pg_dumpall calling pg_dump for > each database). pg_restore on detecting a global type toc.data would restore > the globals and then each of the databases (again possibly in parallel).
I'm curious why we couldn't also support the "custom" format.
Or maybe even a combo - a directory of custom format files? Plus that one special file being globals? I'd say that's what most use cases I've seen would prefer.