Allow using syncfs() in frontend utilities.

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

1 files changed, 27 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/src/fe_utils/option_utils.c b/src/fe_utils/option_utils.c
index 763c991015b..d2a3adeb4ba 100644
--- a/src/fe_utils/option_utils.c
+++ b/src/fe_utils/option_utils.c
@@ -82,3 +82,30 @@ option_parse_int(const char *optarg, const char *optname,
 		*result = val;
 	return true;
 }
+
+/*
+ * Provide strictly harmonized handling of the --sync-method option.
+ */
+bool
+parse_sync_method(const char *optarg, DataDirSyncMethod *sync_method)
+{
+	if (strcmp(optarg, "fsync") == 0)
+		*sync_method = DATA_DIR_SYNC_METHOD_FSYNC;
+	else if (strcmp(optarg, "syncfs") == 0)
+	{
+#ifdef HAVE_SYNCFS
+		*sync_method = DATA_DIR_SYNC_METHOD_SYNCFS;
+#else
+		pg_log_error("this build does not support sync method \"%s\"",
+					 "syncfs");
+		return false;
+#endif
+	}
+	else
+	{
+		pg_log_error("unrecognized sync method: %s", optarg);
+		return false;
+	}
+
+	return true;
+}