libzstd allows transparent parallel compression just by setting
an option when creating the compression context, so permit that
for both client and server-side backup compression. To use this,
use something like pg_basebackup --compress WHERE-zstd:workers=N
where WHERE is "client" or "server" and N is an integer.
When compression is performed on the server side, this will spawn
threads inside the PostgreSQL backend. While there is almost no
PostgreSQL server code which is thread-safe, the threads here are used
internally by libzstd and touch only data structures controlled by
libzstd.
Patch by me, based in part on earlier work by Dipesh Pandit
and Jeevan Ladhe. Reviewed by Justin Pryzby.
Discussion: http://postgr.es/m/CA+Tgmobj6u-nWF-j=FemygUhobhryLxf9h-wJN7W-2rSsseHNA@mail.gmail.com
There are more compression parameters that can be specified than just
an integer compression level, so rename the new COMPRESSION_LEVEL
option to COMPRESSION_DETAIL before it gets released. Introduce a
flexible syntax for that option to allow arbitrary options to be
specified without needing to adjust the main replication grammar,
and common code to parse it that is shared between the client and
the server.
This commit doesn't actually add any new compression parameters,
so the only user-visible change is that you can now type something
like pg_basebackup --compress gzip:level=5 instead of writing just
pg_basebackup --compress gzip:5. However, it should make it easy to
add new options. If for example gzip starts offering fries, we can
support pg_basebackup --compress gzip:level=5,fries=true for the
benefit of users who want fries with that.
Along the way, this fixes a few things in pg_basebackup so that the
pg_basebackup can be used with a server-side compression algorithm
that pg_basebackup itself does not understand. For example,
pg_basebackup --compress server-lz4 could still succeed even if
only the server and not the client has LZ4 support, provided that
the other options to pg_basebackup don't require the client to
decompress the archive.
Patch by me. Reviewed by Justin Pryzby and Dagfinn Ilmari Mannsåker.
Discussion: http://postgr.es/m/CA+TgmoYvpetyRAbbg1M8b3-iHsaN4nsgmWPjOENu5-doHuJ7fA@mail.gmail.com
