Message-ID: <cf21ea99caa39e89d26b8d83d78610db8938bdba.camel@j-davis.com>
Subject: Re: pg_dump --with-* options
From: Jeff Davis <pgsql@j-davis.com>
To: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?=C1lvaro?= Herrera <alvherre@kurilemu.de>, Fujii Masao
	 <masao.fujii@oss.nttdata.com>
Cc: Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>, Nathan Bossart
	 <nathandbossart@gmail.com>, Peter Eisentraut <peter@eisentraut.org>,
 pgsql-hackers <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2025 08:04:17 -0700
In-Reply-To: <202507300823.e4fwfr5vorka@alvherre.pgsql>
References: <202507300823.e4fwfr5vorka@alvherre.pgsql>
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On Wed, 2025-07-30 at 10:23 +0200, =C3=81lvaro Herrera wrote:
> Maybe we should invent a new
> switch, something like
> =C2=A0 --include=3D[schema,data,statistics]
> with which users can give one or more comma-separated types to be
> included in the dump.=C2=A0=20

Robert Treat brought up a similar idea before:

https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/CABV9wwO5v8Nu8q%2BxWexMdL3Z%2B2xS%3Df=
FJMQetBSHy3tR64wNHOA%40mail.gmail.com

I'm certainly open to (re-)considering it.

> Then we state that --data-only is synonym for --include=3Ddata and
> --schema-only is synonym for --include=3Dschema, and we don't need any
> other switches.=C2=A0 Then it is obvious what happens, how to combine
> object types in the dumps and restores, and there's no need to reject
> invalid combinations because there aren't any.

I assume that should be read as something like "include only", because
--include=3Ddata would also be excluding the schema and the stats. And if
that's the case, it does seem strange to do something like "--
include=3Ddata --schema-only".

Another question: could you have multiple --include options, like "--
include=3Ddata --include=3Dschema"? Because you currently can't do "--data-
only --schema-only". So that would make it not quite an alias.

If we go in this direction, it might be easier to just say that --
include conflicts with --schema-only and --data-only.

Regards,
	Jeff Davis