Re: should pg_dumpall --clean apply to database in --exclude-database

On Monday, October 5, 2026, jian he <jian(dot)universality(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:

> Hi.
>
> https://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/app-pg-dumpall.html
> --clean options says
> """
> Emit SQL commands to DROP all the dumped databases, roles, and
> tablespaces before recreating them.
> """
>
> Currently, with --clean, pg_dumpall still emits a DROP DATABASE
> command for databases excluded with --exclude-database.
> It is not clear to me whether --clean is meant to apply to excluded
> databases.
>
> Let's see how --clean and --exclude-table work.
> If I say
> --clean --exclude-table=onek2
> then no SQL command ``DROP TABLE public.onek2``.
>

As documented, and per POLA, no. The database is neither dumped nor going
to be recreated. It indeed should behave as your example with the excluded
table does. The dump file should be unaware of the existence of said
database. Dropping it while not recreating it is quite a bad outcome.

David J.