Re: RFC: Additional Directory for Extensions

Hi everyone,

Apologies for only starting to look into this now. Thanks, David, for
pushing this forward.

I want to emphasize the importance of this patch for the broader adoption
of extensions in immutable container environments, such as those used by
the CloudNativePG operator in Kubernetes.

To provide some context, one of the key principles of CloudNativePG is that
containers, once started, cannot be modified—this includes the installation
of Postgres extensions and their libraries. This restriction prevents us
from adding extensions on the fly, requiring them to be included in the
main PostgreSQL operand image. As a result, users who need specific
extensions must build custom images through automated pipelines (see:
https://cloudnative-pg.io/blog/creating-container-images/)

We’ve been considering ways to improve this process for some time. The
direction we're exploring involves mounting an ephemeral volume that
contains the necessary extensions (namely $sharedir and $pkglibdir from
pg_config). These volumes would be created and populated with the required
extensions when the container starts and destroyed when it shuts down. To
make this work, each extension must be independently packaged as a
container image containing the appropriate files for a specific extension
version, tailored to the architecture, distribution, OS version, and
Postgres version.

I’m committed to thoroughly reviewing this patch, testing it with
CloudNativePG and a few extensions, and providing feedback as soon as
possible.

Best,
Gabriele

On Mon, 8 Jul 2024 at 18:02, David E. Wheeler <david(at)justatheory(dot)com> wrote:

> On Jun 25, 2024, at 18:31, David E. Wheeler <david(at)justatheory(dot)com> wrote:
>
> > For those who prefer a GitHub patch review experience, see this PR:
> >
> > https://github.com/theory/postgres/pull/3/files
>
> Rebased and restored PGC_SUSET in the attached v5 patch, plus noted the
> required privileges in the docs.
>
> Best,
>
> David
>
>
>
>

--
Gabriele Bartolini
Vice President, Cloud Native at EDB
enterprisedb.com