Re: Documentation clarification request: pg_dumpall and Large Objects

Laurenz Albe <laurenz.albe@cybertec.at>

From: Laurenz Albe <laurenz.albe@cybertec.at>
To: "Radoulov, Dimitre" <cichomitiko@gmail.com>
Cc: pgsql-docs@lists.postgresql.org
Date: 2025-12-04T18:11:44Z
Lists: pgsql-docs

Attachments

On Thu, 2025-12-04 at 18:12 +0100, Radoulov, Dimitre wrote:
> Il Gio 4 Dic 2025, 16:50 Laurenz Albe <laurenz.albe@cybertec.at> ha scritto:
> > On Thu, 2025-12-04 at 13:12 +0100, Radoulov, Dimitre wrote:
> > > I would like to request a clarification in the pg_dumpall
> > > documentation regarding Large Objects (LOBs). The current
> > > documentation does not explicitly state whether pg_dumpall includes
> > > Large Objects in its output.
> > 
> > I admit that you have to go by circumstantial evidence here.  But rather
> > than explicitly naming large objects, perhaps it would be useful to add something
> > like
> > 
> >   pg_dumpall is primarily intended as a tool to upgrade database clusters.
> >   As such, it by default exports all data of the entire cluster.
> >   The only part of the state of a database cluster that is *not* included
> >   in the output of pg_dumpall are the configuration files and database parameters
> >   changed with ALTER SYSTEM.
> 
> Thank you again for your time and for considering the suggestion.

Attached is a patch for such a change.

I'll add it to the next commitfest.

Yours,
Laurenz Albe

Commits

  1. Doc: clarify introductory description of pg_dumpall.

  2. Add non-text output formats to pg_dumpall