The pgBackRest community has released pgBackRest 2.59.0, a maintenance and feature release for the popular open-source backup and restore solution. This version brings official support for PostgreSQL 19 and adds a new option to better manage WAL archive retention.
Key changes in this release:
- PostgreSQL 19 support – The tool is now compatible with the upcoming major release, ensuring that users can rely on pgBackRest for their backup needs when upgrading.
- New
archive-expire-beforeoption – This allows administrators to explicitly specify a time or LSN before which WAL files are expired from the archive, giving more granular control over cleanup and storage usage. - The release also includes various bug fixes and improvements to stability, performance, and documentation.
For developers, the addition of archive-expire-before is particularly useful in scenarios where a fixed retention window is not sufficient. For example, you might want to keep WAL files longer during a large migration or compliance period, then purge them once a base backup is taken. The option can be set in the configuration or passed on the command line, providing flexibility in automated scripts.
As always, pgBackRest supports a wide range of features, including parallel backup/restore, block incremental backups, and multiple compression types, making it a robust choice for database infrastructure. With PostgreSQL 19 on the horizon, this release ensures that users can adopt the new database version without sacrificing backup reliability.
Installation packages are available from the PostgreSQL Yum and APT repositories, and source code can be downloaded from the releases page. For full details, see the release notes.
Source: https://www.postgresql.org/about/news/pgbackrest-2590-released-3355/