Re: pg_dump --with-* options

On 2025/06/14 5:32, Nathan Bossart wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 13, 2025 at 08:58:04AM -0700, Jeff Davis wrote:
>> On Fri, 2025-06-13 at 09:39 +0900, Fujii Masao wrote:
>>> By the way, if we keep --with-statistics in pg_dump, are we planning
>>> to
>>> continue using the --with-xxx naming pattern for new options that
>>> specify extra data to dump?
>>
>> Good point. Now that we are getting rid of some of the other options,
>> we don't need to worry about consistency with them, and I think we
>> should just use "--statistics".
> 
> +1

+1

I noticed that --statistics (i.e., the current --with-statistics) causes
statistics to be dumped even when used with --data-only or --schema-only.
So, as far as I understand, here are the possible combinations of dump
targets and options:

  schema, data, stats:       --statistics
  schema, data:              (default)
  schema, stats:             --schema-only --statistics
  data, stats:               --data-only --statistics
  schema only:               --schema-only
  data only:                 --data-only
  stats only:                --statistics-only

This makes me wonder if --no-data and --no-schema are still necessary.
They were also introduced in v18, but might now be redundant. If so,
should we consider removing them?

If we do keep them, we could also use --no-schema --statistics to
dump data and statistics, but I find --data-only --statistics more intuitive.

Regards,

-- 
Fujii Masao
NTT DATA Japan Corporation