Bruce Momjian <pgman(at)candle(dot)pha(dot)pa(dot)us> writes:
> In fact, would a truncate during a backup cause the backup to be
> inconsistent because it wouldn't be a true snapshot of the database at
> backup start time? Seems so.
No, because pg_dump holds AccessShareLock on every table that it intends
to dump, thereby ensuring that TRUNCATE/CLUSTER/etc are held off. The
proposal to weaken the locks that those operations take would in fact
break pg_dump.
regards, tom lane