On Monday, October 5, 2026, jian he <
jian.universality@gmail.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.
