Re: [HACKERS] Patch: Add --no-comments to skip COMMENTs with pg_dump

Tom,

* Tom Lane (tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us) wrote:
> Stephen Frost <sfrost(at)snowman(dot)net> writes:
> > * Tom Lane (tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us) wrote:
> >> Fair point, but doesn't it apply equally to non-default ACLs on any
> >> other system objects? If you tweaked the permissions on say pg_ls_dir(),
> >> then dump, then tweak them some more, you're going to get uncertain
> >> results if you load that dump back into this database ... with or without
> >> --clean, because we certainly aren't going to drop pinned objects.
>
> > Yes, that's certainly true, the public schema is the only "special"
> > animal in this regard and making it less special (and more like
> > pg_ls_dir()) would definitely be nice.
>
> I wonder if it'd be worth the trouble to invent a variant of REVOKE
> that means "restore this object's permissions to default" --- that is,
> either the ACL recorded in pg_init_privs if there is one, or NULL if
> there's no pg_init_privs entry. Then you could imagine pg_dump emitting
> that command before trying to assign an ACL to any object it hadn't
> created earlier in the run, rather than guessing about the current state
> of the object's ACL. (I'm not volunteering.)

I actually like that idea quite a bit.. Not really high on my priority
list though.

> >> I think we could jigger things so that we dump the definition of these
> >> special quasi-system objects only if their ACLs are not default, but
> >> it's not clear to me that that's really an improvement in the long run.
> >> Seems like it's just making them even wartier.
>
> > Yeah, that would be worse, I agree.
>
> So are we at a consensus yet?

You had me at "make public less special", I was just trying to make sure
we all understand what that means.

+1 from me for moving forward.

Thanks!

Stephen