Florian Pflug <fgp.phlo.org@gmail.com> writes:
> But isn't that an argument *for* having support for the binary format in
> libpq in a form similar to what this patch offers? Then at least you'd
> be safe as long as your libpq-version is >= your server version.
> Currently, there seems to be no safe way to use the binary format,
That's right, there isn't, and it's folly to imagine that anything like
this will make it "safe".
What we really put in the binary I/O support for was for COPY BINARY,
with a rather limited use-case of fast dump and reload between similar
server versions (you'll notice pg_dump does NOT use it). Yeah, we
expose it for clients to use, but they had better understand that they
are increasing their risk of cross-version portability problems.
regards, tom lane