Adventures in Extension Packaging
summary
PGXN v2 prototypes a binary distribution: a trunk package format bundled into OCI image index artifacts, with a CLI that pulls the correct image for OS/PG version. A prototype builds Darwin ARM64 and Linux AMD64 trunks, pushes them to a registry and installs them successfully. Scaling reveals concrete blockers: 238+ extensions required manual fixes, libc incompatibilities between Ubuntu 22/24, PGRX version collisions, inconsistent CMake pipelines, and dependency oddities (DuckDB, libcurl). Runpath bundling partly works; image-volume immutability forces design tradeoffs.
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chapters (11)
- 0:00Introduction and background
- 1:56PGXN overview and limitations
- 4:48Vision for PGXN version 2
- 8:18Metaspec v2 and binary packaging
- 15:01Trunk package format proposal
- 24:08Challenges in automated packaging
- 32:57Cloud-native Postgres extensions
- 37:11Extension search path proposal
- 41:04Handling dependencies in packaging
- 46:26Run path and dependency resolution
- 48:35Future work and call to action
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