Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2025 15:22:13 -0500
From: Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com>
To: Corey Huinker <corey.huinker@gmail.com>
Cc: Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>, Jeff Davis <pgsql@j-davis.com>,
	Peter Eisentraut <peter@eisentraut.org>,
	pgsql-hackers <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: pg_dump --with-* options
Message-ID: <aEs29UQXDHxxoPtd@nathan>
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On Thu, Jun 12, 2025 at 04:12:35PM -0400, Corey Huinker wrote:
> The use case for --statistics-only is to extract the existing statistics
> for the tables and indexes that are involved in a given query that is
> giving you problems, allowing you to apply those statistics to an existing
> QA/dev database and tweak them without further impacting operations on the
> production database. I think this will prove to be very useful, and having
> a --statistics-only flag conveys the clear intent of "I want the stats, and
> only the stats",

I do think this is useful functionality, I only suggested removing it
because AFAICT it is redundant, i.e., you can accomplish the same thing
with --with-statistics --no-schema --no-data.  It seems like we're trying
to avoid having multiple ways to do the same thing.

> If we're hot to remove options, how about we remove the sections flags?
> Their utility is reliant upon the user understanding exactly which things
> go in which section, and further assumes that everything deterministically
> goes in exactly one section, which is no longer the case as Jeff
> pointed out recently. They have outlived their usefulness.

I almost brought this up earlier as something else we could potentially
trim.  That's v19 material at this point, though.

-- 
nathan