Re: Clarification on DROP OWNED BY command in PG18

Thanks for reporting.

On Mon, Sep 15, 2025 at 10:43:06PM +0530, DIPESH DHAMELIYA wrote:
> Starting from commit 98fc31d (PG18 only), there is a new behaviour for
> DROP OWNED BY command where it deletes entries from pg_auth_members
> (including entries with ADMIN option). This change can cause a user/role
> to lose the ability to DROP the role for which DROP OWNED BY was
> executed. Even when following the documentation guidance[0], users cannot
> DROP ROLE (except superuser). The same guidance succeeds on
> REL_17_STABLE.

Yeah, that doesn't seem right to me. It's quite late in the game for v18,
and given the low severity of the bug that commit 98fc31d intended to fix
and the fact that it wasn't back-patched, I'm wondering if we should revert
for v18 and revisit in v19.

--
nathan