Skip table create

[alikhd1]

Description

I’m migrating data from an existing SQLite database into a PostgreSQL database using pgloader.
My PostgreSQL target database already has some tables created by Alembic migrations (for example, alembic_version).

When I run pgloader, it attempts to create all tables from SQLite, even if they already exist in PostgreSQL.
This causes errors like:

ERROR Database error 42P07: relation "alembic_version" already exists
QUERY: CREATE TABLE alembic_version
(
  version_num text
);
FATAL Failed to create the schema, see above.

---

Steps to Reproduce

1. Create a PostgreSQL database with an existing table, e.g.:

CREATE TABLE alembic_version (version_num TEXT);

2. Run pgloader:

pgloader sqlite:///source.db postgresql://user:pass@host:5432/target

3. pgloader fails because it tries to CREATE TABLE alembic_version again.

---

Expected Behavior

There should be a way to:

• Import data into existing PostgreSQL tables without re-creating them.
• Or explicitly exclude some tables (like alembic_version) from schema creation, while still importing the rest.

---

What I Tried

• Adding WITH include no drop → still attempts to create tables.
• Adding no create tables under WITH → parse error (ESRAP-PARSE-ERROR).
• Excluding tables with EXCLUDING TABLE NAMES MATCHING ~/alembic_version/ also didn’t work as expected (still tries to create schema).

---

Environment

• pgloader version: 3.6.7~devel

---

Question / Feature Request

Is there a supported way to only load data into existing schema without pgloader trying to re-create tables?
If not, could we add a no create tables option or make EXCLUDING TABLE NAMES skip schema creation for those tables?

pgloader fails when target DB already has existing tables (alembic_version already exists)

Description

I’m migrating data from an existing SQLite database into a PostgreSQL database using pgloader.
My PostgreSQL target database already has some tables created by Alembic migrations (for example, alembic_version).

When I run pgloader, it attempts to create all tables from SQLite, even if they already exist in PostgreSQL.
This causes errors like:

ERROR Database error 42P07: relation "alembic_version" already exists
QUERY: CREATE TABLE alembic_version
(
  version_num text
);
FATAL Failed to create the schema, see above.

---

Steps to Reproduce

1. Create a PostgreSQL database with an existing table, e.g.:

CREATE TABLE alembic_version (version_num TEXT);

2. Run pgloader:

pgloader sqlite:///source.db postgresql://user:pass@host:5432/target

3. pgloader fails because it tries to CREATE TABLE alembic_version again.

---

Expected Behavior

There should be a way to:

• Import data into existing PostgreSQL tables without re-creating them.
• Or explicitly exclude some tables (like alembic_version) from schema creation, while still importing the rest.

---

What I Tried

• Adding WITH include no drop → still attempts to create tables.
• Adding no create tables under WITH → parse error (ESRAP-PARSE-ERROR).
• Excluding tables with EXCLUDING TABLE NAMES MATCHING ~/alembic_version/ also didn’t work as expected (still tries to create schema).

---

Environment

• pgloader version: 3.6.7~devel

---

Question / Feature Request

Is there a supported way to only load data into existing schema without pgloader trying to re-create tables?
If not, could we add a no create tables option or make EXCLUDING TABLE NAMES skip schema creation for those tables?