Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2025 15:57:01 -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
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On Thu, Jun 12, 2025 at 04:39:00PM -0400, Corey Huinker wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 12, 2025 at 4:22 PM Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> 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.
> 
> By that same argument, we should remove --schema-only and --data-only as
> well. I think we shouldn't because those two options have proved very
> convenient for users and they convey clear intent to the person reading the
> script, and I believe that --statistics-only will prove the same over time.

Those predate v18, so while might be able to mark them deprecated, I doubt
we'd remove them anytime soon.  

FWIW I don't have a tremendously strong opinion about --statistics-only.
I'd probably vote to remove it because 1) it's redundant, 2) once you add
an option, it's hard to remove it, and 3) pg_dump already has so many
options.  But I won't cry too hard if we keep it around.

-- 
nathan