> I'd love to have another upgrade path than `pg_dump | psql`

pg_upgrade

pg_upgrade is not an option on many systems if you are installing with the package manager as it requires both old and new binaries to be simultaneously present.

Well, that's a problem of the package manager, not a Postgres problem.

At least with Ubuntu and RedHat/CentOS/Rocky/... installing two versions in parallel is absolutely no problem.

I think Ubuntu even wraps that into their upgrade scripts and you can pass an option to use pg_upgrade or pg_dump/pg_restore

Arch Linux e.g. solved this by having a `postgresql-old-upgrade` package.

Or logical replication to the new box then migrate traffic.

There is pg_upgrade and logical replication. I have used both and they both work excellently. Logical replication can be a bit of a hassle to set up though, especially if the database is huge.