Re: pg_dump new feature: exporting functions only. Bad or good idea ?

"David G. Johnston" <david(dot)g(dot)johnston(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> The extension object type does not seem to have gotten the
> --exclude-extension capability that it would need to conform to the general
> design exemplified by --table and hopefully extended out to the routine
> object types.

We're not going to instantly build out every feature that would be
suggested by a roadmap. However, I see in what you just wrote
a plausible roadmap: eventually, all or most object types should
have pg_dump switches comparable to, and syntactically aligned
with, the --table and --exclude-table switches. The expectation
would be that if any of these selective-dump switches appear,
then only objects matching at least one of them (and not matching
any --exclude switch) will be dumped. So for example

pg_dump --table=foo* --function=bar*

dumps tables whose names start with foo, and functions whose
names start with bar, and nothing else. (We'd need to spell out
how these things interact with --schema, too.)

In this scheme, Lætitia's desired functionality should be spelled
"--function=*", or possibly "--routine=*", depending on what she
wanted to happen with procedures.

Thoughts?

regards, tom lane