This package contains two tools for backing up PostgreSQL database dumps.

To install in a virtualenv or globally as a superuser:

pip install pgtricks

To install only for the current user:

pip install --user pgtricks

pg_dump_splitsort is a handy script for pre-processing PostgreSQL's pg_dump output to make it more suitable for diffing and storing in version control.

Usage:

pg_dump_splitsort <filename>.sql

The script splits the dump into the following files:

The files for table data are numbered so a simple sorted concatenation of all files can be used to re-create the database:

$ cat *.sql | psql <database>

I've found that a good way to take a quick look at differences between dumps is to use the meld tool on the whole directory:

$ meld old-dump/ new-dump/

Storing the dump in version control also gives a decent view on the differences. Here's how to configure git to use color in diffs:

# ~/.gitconfig
[color]
        diff = true
[color "diff"]
        frag = white blue bold
        meta = white green bold
        commit = white red bold

Note: If you have created/dropped/renamed tables, remember to delete all .sql files before post-processing the new dump.

The pg_incremental_backup script

• makes a database dump using pg_dump
• splits the dump into per-table files using pg_dump_splitsort
• creates or commits changes into a local Git repository containing the dump
• pushes the changes to the remote repository

Usage:

pg_incremental_backup [-h] [--output-dir OUTPUT_DIR] database [remote]

positional arguments:
  database
  remote

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --output-dir OUTPUT_DIR, -o OUTPUT_DIR