Fw: I remember why I suggested CREATE FUNCTION...AS NULL

ALTER FUNCTION numpeople() AS
'SELECT COUNT(*) FROM managers' LANGUAGE 'plpgsql';

Actually, I think this would still work, because it
doesn't check the table name existance until it's
used for the first time, not when it's created.

But SQL-language function bodies are checked at entry, not only
at first use. (I consider it a deficiency of plpgsql that it
doesn't do likewise.)

Yeah (didn't think about SQL ones). Although the deferred
creation with like a nulled out prosrc would probably solve
these problems as long as you never wanted to actually
call the function until the restore was done, so we wouldn't
want any default values, rules or triggers that might use them
to be activated.