Re: pg_dump -X

On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 10:36 PM, Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> wrote:
> Robert Haas wrote:
>> Back in 2006, we have this commit:
>>
>> commit 2b25e1169f44368c120931787628d51731b5cc8c
>> Author: Peter Eisentraut <peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net>
>> Date:   Sat Oct 7 20:59:05 2006 +0000
>>
>>     The -X option in pg_dump was supposed to be a workaround for the lack of
>>     portable long options.  But we have had portable long options for a long
>>     time now, so this is obsolete.  Now people have added options which *only*
>>     work with -X but not as regular long option, so I'm putting a stop to this:
>>     -X is deprecated; it still works, but it has been removed from the
>>     documentation, and please don't add more of them.
>>
>> Since then, two additional -X options have crept in, doubtless due to
>> mimicry of the existing options without examination of the commit
>> logs.  I think we should either (a) remove the -X option altogether or
>> (b) change the comment so that it clearly states the same message that
>> appears here in the commit log, namely, that no new -X options are to
>> be created.  The existing comment says that -X is deprecated, but that
>> doesn't make it entirely 100% clear that the code isn't intended to be
>> further updated, at least judging by the results.
>
> Code comment added with attached, applied patch.

At a minimum, we should probably also remove -X no-security-label and
-X no-unlogged-table-data, which don't exist in any released versions
(unless you want to count alphas). But considering that this has been
deprecated and undocumented since 8.2, I think it might be time to
pull the plug on -X altogether.

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company