Schedule - PostgreSQL Development Conference 2024

The future of the extension ecosystem

Date: 2024-05-30
Time: 11:30–12:20
Room: Canfor(1600)
Level: Intermediate

PGXN may have been the earliest Postgres extension registry, but it wasn't the last! The past year has seen new entrants including database.dev, trunk, and others, collectively suggesting burgeoning interest in extensions and a desire to extend and improve discovery, packaging, and distribution. Other communities have also created new patterns and practices for package management, including npm for JavaScript, pkg.go.dev for Go, and crates.io for Rust, among others. The time has come to revisit the Postgres extension ecosystem, figure out what works, what doesn't, and what new ideas we can adopt from neighboring communities to build toward a canonical registry and a robust packaging and distribution system. In this talk, PGXN creator David Wheeler briefly reviews the history of extension distribution, identifies some of the challenges and shortcomings, and lays out a community-driven vision to work toward extension nirvana. The plan includes a canonical registry, robust search and metadata APIs, comprehensive documentation, binary packaging – and tons of community feedback and participation. Come see where we want to take extensions into the future, stay to tell us how to make it better than we've yet dreamed of.