Thread: pg_dump no-owner option

The following documentation comment has been logged on the website:

Page: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/12/app-pgdump.html
Description:

Currently the documentation reads:

This option is only meaningful for the plain-text format. 

This statement is imprecise. Actually the cownership has nothing to do with
the format, it is equally meaningul to create a dump without ownership
infomration for any format. Currently this is not possibel for any format
except plain, as the option is ignored. 

So, the cited sentence should be replaced with 'This option is ignored for
all formats except plain'. 

Would be much better to change the behavior of the utility to allow the
option for all formats, but htis is somewhat more than just documentaion
change.

PG Doc comments form <noreply@postgresql.org> writes:
> Currently the documentation reads:
> This option is only meaningful for the plain-text format. 

> This statement is imprecise.

Yeah, I agree --- it's not clear whether the option is ignored or
rejected.  Explicitly saying it's ignored is an improvement.

> Would be much better to change the behavior of the utility to allow the
> option for all formats, but htis is somewhat more than just documentaion
> change.

I disagree that that would be an improvement.  Per the next sentence that
you omitted, the right time to apply this and similar options is when
extracting data from the archive format.  (pg_dump to text effectively
constructs an archive dump in-memory and then extracts from that, so that
its "back half" logic is identical to pg_restore's.)  Filtering this info
before dumping the archive would save no meaningful amount of space, while
restricting how the archive could be used later.

            regards, tom lane