This commit allows specifying a --sync-method in several frontend
utilities that must synchronize many files to disk (initdb,
pg_basebackup, pg_checksums, pg_dump, pg_rewind, and pg_upgrade).
On Linux, users can specify "syncfs" to synchronize the relevant
file systems instead of calling fsync() for every single file. In
many cases, using syncfs() is much faster.
As with recovery_init_sync_method, this new option comes with some
caveats. The descriptions of these caveats have been moved to a
new appendix section in the documentation.
Co-authored-by: Justin Pryzby
Reviewed-by: Michael Paquier, Thomas Munro, Robert Haas, Justin Pryzby
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/20210930004340.GM831%40telsasoft.com
Nathan Bossart