Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> writes:
> For example, if you do pg_stop_backup(), in what cases would you not
> also call pg_finish_wal_segment()? I can't think of one.
I can't see why you would need to, unless your intention is not to run
PITR at all but only to make a filesystem backup instead of using
pg_dump. Normally you'd be running a continuing archival process and
there's no particular need to force the current WAL segment off to
archive at that exact instant.
My point here is that forcing the current segment to archive is a
function of whatever your continuous-archiving process is, and it's
not necessarily tied to backups. We should not prejudge when people
want that fairly-expensive function to be invoked.
regards, tom lane