Install Third Party Extensions

Postgres has a rich ecosystem of extensions. To keep the size of the ParadeDB Dockerfile small, only the ParadeDB extensions — pg_search and pg_analytics — and a limited set of third party extensions are included:

• pg_search for full text search
• pg_analytics for fast queries over data lakes
• pgvector for vector search
• postgis for geospatial search
• pg_ivm for incremental materialized views
• pg_cron for cron jobs

However, additional extensions can be installed inside ParadeDB.

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Installing Third Party Extensions

The process for installing an extension varies by extension. Generally speaking, it requires:

• Download the prebuilt binaries inside ParadeDB
• Install the extension binary and any dependencies inside ParadeDB
• Add the extension to shared_preload_libraries in postgresql.conf, if required by the extension
• Run CREATE EXTENSION <extension name>

We recommend installing third party extensions from prebuilt binaries to keep the image size small. As an example, let’s install pg_partman, an extension for managing table partition sets.

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Install Prebuilt Binaries

First, enter a shell with root permissions in the ParadeDB image.

docker exec -it --user root paradedb bash

Next, install the prebuilt binaries. Most popular Postgres extensions can be installed with apt-get install.

apt-get update
apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends postgresql-16-partman

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Add to shared_preload_libraries

sed -i "/^shared_preload_libraries/s/'\([^']*\)'/'\1,<extension_name>'/" /var/lib/postgresql/data/postgresql.conf

sed -i "/^shared_preload_libraries/s/'\([^']*\)'/'\1,pg_partman_bgw'/" /var/lib/postgresql/data/postgresql.conf

Postgres must be restarted afterwards. We recommend simply restarting the Docker container.

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Create the Extension

Connect to ParadeDB via psql and create the extension.

CREATE EXTENSION pg_partman;

pg_partman is now ready to use!

Note that this is a simple example of installing pg_partman. The full list of settings and optional dependencies can be found in the official installation instructions.