Boy howdy that went fast.
This Wednesday, May 15, the final Postgres extension ecosystem mini-summit will review topics covered in previous Mini-Summits, various Planet PostgreSQL posts, the #extensions channel on the Postgres Slack and the Postgres Discord. Following a brief description of each, we’ll determine how to reduce the list to the most important topics to take on at the Extension Ecosystem Summit at PGConf.dev in Vancouver on May 28. I’ll post a summary later this week along with details for how to participate in the selection process.
In the meantime, here’s the list as of today:
- Metadata:
- Third-party dependencies
- Types of extensions
- Taxonomies
- System requirements (OS, version, CPU, etc.)
- Categorization
- Versioning
- Registry:
- Identity, namespacing, and uniqueness
- Distributed vs. centralized publishing
- Binary packaging and distribution patterns
- Federated distribution
- Services and tools to improve or build
- Stats, Reports, Badging: (stars, reviews, comments, build & test matrices, etc.)
- Packaging:
- Formats (e.g., tarball, OCI, RPM, wheel, etc.)
- Include dynamic libs in binary packaging format? (precedent: Python wheel)
- Build farming
- Platforms, architectures, and OSes
- Security, trust, and verification
- Developer:
- Extension developer tools
- Improving the release process
- Build pipelines: Supporting PGXS, prgx, Rust, Go, Python, Ruby, Perl, and more
- Community:
- Community integration: identity, infrastructure, and support
- How-Tos, tutorials, documentation for creating, maintaining, and distributing extensions
- Docs/references for different types of extensions:
CREATE EXTENSION, hooks, background workers, CLI apps/services, web apps, native apps, etc.
- Core:
- Second extension directory (a.k.a. variable installation location, search path)
- Keeping all files in a single directory
- Documentation standard
- Inline extensions: UNITs, PACKAGEs, TLEs, etc.
- Minimizing restarts
- Namespacing
- Sandboxing, code signing, security, trust
- Dynamic module loading (e.g.,
use Thingin PL/Perl could try to loadThing.pm - from a table of acceptable libraries maintained by the DBA)
- Binary compatibility of minor releases and/or /ABI stability
Is your favorite topic missing? Join us at the mini-summit or drop suggestions into the #extensions channel on the Postgres Slack.