A PostgreSQL extension that clones databases, schemas, tables, and functions between PostgreSQL instances — directly from SQL. No pg_dump, no pg_restore, no shell scripts.

Key Features

• Clone anything - tables, schemas, functions, entire databases, roles and permissions
• Fast data transfer - uses PostgreSQL COPY protocol
• Data masking - anonymize sensitive columns during cloning (email, name, phone, hash, partial, null, random, constant)
• Auto-discovery - scan source schemas for sensitive columns and get suggested mask rules
• Static & dynamic masking — mask existing tables in-place, or create role-based masked views
• Async operations - background workers with progress tracking and visual progress bar
• Parallel cloning - multiple background workers for concurrent table cloning
• Selective cloning - filter columns and rows with columns and WHERE options
• Full DDL support - indexes, constraints (PK, UNIQUE, CHECK, FK, EXCLUDE), triggers, views, materialized views, sequences
• Conflict resolution - error, skip, replace, or rename strategies
• Cross-version - tested on PostgreSQL 14, 15, 16, 17, and 18

Quick Start

# Build and install
git clone https://github.com/valehdba/pgclone.git
cd pgclone
make
sudo make install

-- Enable the extension
CREATE EXTENSION pgclone;
-- Clone a table
SELECT pgclone.table(
    'host=source-server dbname=mydb user=postgres password=secret',
    'public', 'customers', true
);
-- Clone an entire schema
SELECT pgclone.schema(
    'host=source-server dbname=mydb user=postgres password=secret',
    'sales', true
);
-- Clone a full database
SELECT pgclone.database(
    'host=source-server dbname=mydb user=postgres password=secret',
    true
);

Requirements

• PostgreSQL 14 or later
• PostgreSQL development headers (postgresql-server-dev-XX)
• libpq development library (libpq-dev)
• GCC or compatible C compiler

Installation

Debian / Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install postgresql-server-dev-18 libpq-dev build-essential

RHEL / CentOS / Rocky / AlmaLinux

sudo dnf install postgresql18-devel libpq-devel gcc make

macOS (Homebrew)

brew install postgresql@18

Build

make
sudo make install
# For a specific PostgreSQL version:
make PG_CONFIG=/usr/lib/postgresql/18/bin/pg_config
sudo make install PG_CONFIG=/usr/lib/postgresql/18/bin/pg_config

Enable

CREATE EXTENSION pgclone;
SELECT pgclone.version();

For async operations, add to postgresql.conf and restart:

shared_preload_libraries = 'pgclone'

pgclone uses Unix domain sockets for local loopback connections, so the default local all all peer line in pg_hba.conf is sufficient — no trust entry needed. If Unix sockets are unavailable, pgclone falls back to TCP 127.0.0.1 and appropriate pg_hba.conf configuration is required.

Documentation

Roadmap

• v0.1.0: Clone tables, schemas, functions, databases
• v0.2.0: Indexes, constraints, triggers
• v0.3.0: Async background workers with progress tracking
• v1.0.0: Resume support and conflict resolution
  • v1.1.0: Selective column cloning and data filtering
  • v1.2.0: Materialized views and exclusion constraints
• v2.0.0: True multi-worker parallel cloning
  • v2.0.1: pgclone.database_create() — create + clone database
  • v2.1.0: Progress tracking view (pgclone.jobs_view)
  • v2.1.1: Visual progress bar
  • v2.1.3: Elapsed time tracking
  • v2.1.4: Unix domain socket auth (no more pg_hba.conf trust requirement)
  • v2.2.0: Worker pool (fixed pool size instead of one bgworker per table)
  • v2.2.1: Read-only transaction for WHERE clause (SQL injection protection)
• v3.0.0: Data anonymization / masking
  • v3.1.0: Auto-Discovery of Sensitive Data
  • v3.2.0: Applying Static Data Masking to cloned data
  • v3.3.0: Applying Dynamic Data Masking to cloned data
  • v3.4.0: Clone roles with permissions and passwords
• v3.5.0: Clone verification - compare row counts across source and target
• v3.6.0: GDPR/Compliance masking report
• v4.0.0: Schema namespace — all functions under pgclone schema (pgclone.table(), pgclone.schema(), etc.)
• v4.1.0: Schema diff — DDL drift detection between source and target (pgclone.diff)
• v4.2.0: Pre-flight validator — connection, space, permissions, version, name-conflict checks before clone (pgclone.preflight)
• v4.3.0: Consistent-snapshot clones — every clone reads the source under one shared REPEATABLE READ READ ONLY snapshot (sync, async, and parallel pool); cross-table FK consistency on a live source is now guaranteed (same model as pg_dump -j)
• v4.4.0: Schema/database-level in-line masking ("masks") and regex table subset filters ("tables" / "exclude_tables") — discussion #16
• v4.4.1: Type-aware masking — a mask that a column's type cannot store (e.g. random_int on a boolean) is skipped with a warning instead of aborting the clone; discover_sensitive no longer suggests incompatible masks — issue #17
• v4.4.2: Constraint- and length-aware masking — masks are clamped to a column's length and skipped when they would overflow, feed a bad literal to a numeric column, or violate a NOT NULL / UNIQUE / FOREIGN KEY constraint; UNIQUE/PK and NOT NULL sensitive columns are steered to hash — issue #18
• v4.5.0: FK-aware referential sampling — sample N rows and follow foreign keys to keep child rows consistent (pgclone.table_sample)

License

PostgreSQL License