Re: pg_dumpall with flag --no-role-passwords omits roles comments as well

> On 20 Mar 2024, at 18:40, Bartosz Chroł <bartosz(dot)chrol(at)handen(dot)pl> wrote:
>
> Hello,
> I've tried to dump roles using the following call to pg_dumpall:
> pg_dumpall.exe --roles-only --no-role-passwords
> However I noticed that comments on roles are also omitted from the dump, as if --no--comments flag was set - but it wasn't.
> When I call `pg_dumpall.exe --roles-only` than it works as expected - both passwords and comments are dumped.
>
> Is it correct behaviour? It doesn't look like to me, but maybe I'm missing something. I've checked PostgreSQL 16.2 (on Windows 11 and Ubuntu 20) and 14.0 (on Windows Server 2019), same everywhere.

Comments on roles are stored against the pg_authid catalog relation which is
the catalog used for dumping roles, but when using --no-role-passwords we
instead switch to using the pg_roles catalog relation. Since comments are
dumped for the relations which are dumped, this means that the comments on
roles are omitted when --no-role-passwords is used.

It's not clear whether that was intentional or not, I'm failing to find the
thread where it was discussed on a quick mailing list search. It kind of feels
like an accidental bug since the restored role will be in pg_authid where the
comment should be attached.

--
Daniel Gustafsson