On 2025/06/12 22:47, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
On 06.06.25 17:39, Nathan Bossart wrote:
On Fri, Jun 06, 2025 at 09:14:32AM +0200, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
We have
-a, --data-only dump only the data, not the schema or statistics
--no-data do not dump data
--with-data dump the data # this one is new
(and there is also --section=data), and then three analogous options for
"schema" and "statistics".
What is the purpose of the --with-data option? Dumping the data is the
default. Is this to override an earlier --no-data option?
I believe the idea is that these will allow folks to be explicit about what
they want instead of needing to understand the defaults for every
component.
I get that idea, but we really need some more documentation for this, I think.
So far I could only guess how this is supposed to be used, and I also happened
to guess wrong.
My initial guess was that --with-data can override --no-data. That would have been
pretty standard "last option wins" behavior. But pg_dump rejects that.
Personally, I think that is kind of wrong.
But you can use --with-data to override, say, --schema-only. That also seems
kind of wrong to me, but anyway.
While testing pg_dump --with-* in relation to bug #18952 [1],
I also ran into this behavior. It was surprising,
as I expected pg_dump to reject that combination of options.
The current behavior seems confusing.
Regards,
[1] https://postgr.es/m/18952-be40a620f8b1e...@postgresql.org
--
Fujii Masao
NTT DATA Japan Corporation
