Feature Idea: Direct partition dumping support in mysqldump (e.g., --partitions flag)

[paraskumar09]

Hi everyone,

I wanted to open a discussion about improving how we dump partitioned tables using mysqldump.

Right now, if I want to take a dump of a single partition, I have to use the --where clause and manually write out the logic (like a specific date range) to match that partition. It works, but it feels a bit inefficient and leaves room for user error if the boundary logic is mistyped.

The Idea:
Would it be possible to add a --partitions flag to mysqldump?

Ideally, we could just run something like:
mysqldump db_name table_name --partitions=p2026_07 > backup.sql

This would mirror how we can already do SELECT * FROM table PARTITION (p2026_07) in standard queries. It would make backup scripts cleaner and less prone to logical errors.

Is this something that has been considered before, or are there technical hurdles making this difficult to implement? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!