←back to thread

What if we treated Postgres like SQLite?

(www.maragu.dev)
75 points markusw | 1 comments | 22 Sep 25 13:29 UTC | HN request time: 0.24s | source
Show context
eirikbakke ◴[22 Sep 25 16:11 UTC] No.45335495[source]▶
The PostgreSQL data directory format is not very stable or portable. You can't just ZIP it up and move it to a different machine, unless the new machine has the same architecture and "sufficiently" similar PostgreSQL binaries.

In theory the data directory works with any PostgreSQL binaries from the same major version of PostgreSQL, but I have seen cases where this fails e.g. because the binaries were from the same major version but compiled with different build options.

replies(5): >>45335952 #>>45336357 #>>45336495 #>>45336741 #>>45337960 #
oulipo2 ◴[22 Sep 25 17:14 UTC] No.45336495[source]▶
So the alternative would be to just pg_dump / pg_restore the content? Is it an issue?
replies(3): >>45336699 #>>45336703 #>>45347794 #
1. eirikbakke ◴[23 Sep 25 14:45 UTC] No.45347794[source]▶
That is the correct way to do it for PostgreSQL.

It does rule out some common SQLite use cases, such as using the database for app persistence. The app would never be able to upgrade the major version of PostgreSQL, unless it bundled PostgreSQL binaries for every major version ever used.