Duplicating data folder without tablespace, for read access

Hi --

I'm wondering whether, in my specific situation, it would be safe to copy a
database cluster's data folder, and bring up the copy for read access,
without copying a tablespace linked from it. My situation (described below)
involves a database with a 100GB table and a 600GB table where I want to
routinely clone just the 100GB table for web access.

---

For context, the last discussion I've found is from 2013, in this blog post
from Christophe Pettus and response from Tom Lane:

https://thebuild.com/blog/2013/03/10/you-cannot-recover-from-the-loss-of-a-tablespace/
https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/19786.1367378009@sss.pgh.pa.us

In that discussion, Christophe summarized the situation this way:

> I would not count on it. And if it works 100% reliably now, it might not
on a future version of PostgreSQL.

> As Josh Berkus pointed out to my off-list, there are two competing
definitions of the term "recover" in use here:

> 1. In my blog post, the definition of "recover" was "bring up the
database without having unusually extensive knowledge of PostgreSQL's
internals."
> 2. For Tom, the definition of "recover" is "bring up the database if you
have appropriate knowledge of PostgreSQL's internals."

> You can't recover from the lost of a tablespace per definition #1. You
can per definition #2.

> I'd strongly suggest that relying on definition #2, while absolutely
correct, is a poor operational decision for most users.

https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/FABAC7F1-3172-4B5D-8E56-0B3C579980EC%40thebuild.com

---

Now here's the situation where I want to do what Christophe said not to do:
:)

I have a large database of text, with a 600GB table and a 100GB table
connected by a join table. They both see occasional updates throughout the
week. Once a week I want to "cut a release," meaning I will clone just the
100GB table and copy it to a "release" server for read-only web access.

My procedure would be:

- keep the 600GB table on a separate tablespace
- cleanly stop postgres on both servers
- copy the data folder to the release server
- delete pg_tblspc/* on the release server
- start postgres on both servers

In local testing this seems to work -- the release server works fine, and I
only get an error message if I try to access the missing tables, which is
expected. But are there reasons this is going to bite me if I try it in
production? I'm hoping it helps that (a) I'm only doing read access, (b) I
can cleanly stop both servers before cutting a release, and (c) I'm not
worried about losing data, since it's just an access copy.

Alternatives I've considered:

- I could pg_dump and restore, but the 100GB table has lots of indexes and
I'd rather not have to reindex on the release server each week.
- I could replicate with pglogical and use some sort of blue-green setup on
the release server to cut a release, but this adds a lot of moving parts,
especially to deal with schema migrations.

Thanks for any advice you might have!

-Jack