Re: Mention pg_dump version portability

"Jim C. Nasby" <jnasby@pervasive.com> writes:
> But shouldn't the custom format deal better with version changes, or
> does the format of custom change just as often?

It's completely orthogonal, because the SQL involved is just the same.
One of the tests I periodically run is to compare
    pg_dump >foo
    pg_dump -Fc | pg_restore >bar
and make sure the outputs are word-for-word the same.

What custom or tar format buys you is the flexibility of extracting
different subsets of the dump after-the-fact, using pg_restore's
switches.  Of course you can do that with a text editor on a plain
dump, if the dump's not too large for your editor to handle ...

            regards, tom lane