Re: Non-text mode for pg_dumpall

On 2025-07-17 Th 7:11 AM, Álvaro Herrera wrote:
> On 2025-Jul-17, Mahendra Singh Thalor wrote:
>
>> To pg_restore, we are giving a dump of pg_dumpall which has a
>> global.dat file and we have drop commands in the global.dat file so
>> when we are using 'globals-only', we are dropping databases as we have
>> DROP commands.
>> As of now, we don't have any filter for global.dat file in restore. If
>> a user wants to restore only globals(without droping db), then they
>> should use 'globals-only' in pg_dumpall.
>> Or if we don't want to DROP databases by global.dat file, then we
>> should add a filter in pg_restore (hard to implement as we have SQL
>> commands in global.dat file).
> I think dropping database is dangerous and makes no practical sense;
> doing it renders pg_dumpall --clean completely unusable. You're arguing
> from the point of view of ease of implementation, but that doesn't help
> users.

Yeah. I also agree with Noah that we should be consistent with pg_dump.
And we should err on the side of caution. If we impose a little
inconvenience on the user by requiring them to drop a database, it's
better than surprising them by dropping a database when they didn't
expect it.

There are some subtleties here. pg_restore will only issue DROP DATABASE
of you use the -C flag, even if you specify --clean, so we need to be
very careful about issuing DROP DATABASE.

I confess that all this didn't occur to me when working on the commit.

>> I think, for this case, we can do some
>> more doc changes.
>> Example: pg_restore --globals-only : this will restore the global.dat
>> file(including all drop commands). It might drop databases if any drop
>> commands.
> I don't think doc changes are useful.

Yeah, I don't think this is something that can be  cured by documentation.

cheers

andrew

--
Andrew Dunstan
EDB:https://www.enterprisedb.com