Autopex: PostgreSQL extension installation magic

Autopex is the brainchild of a long night at the Royal Oak. It ties together Pex and event triggers to magically download and build any extension that you install. So after you have set everything up you can do, say, CREATE EXTENSION plproxy, and it will transparently download and build plproxy for you. (Actually, this only works if the extension name is the same as the package name. I'm planning to fix that.)

Note 1: You can't install Autopex via Pex, yet.

Note 2: I guess the next logical step would be Autoautopex, which installs Autopex and Pex automatically somehow. Patches welcome.

I suppose with logical replication, this might actually end up installing the extension code on the replication slaves as well. That would be pretty neat.

Introducing the Pex package manager for PostgreSQL

I have written a new light-weight package manager for PostgreSQL, called pex. It's targeted at developers, allows easy customization, and supports multiple PostgreSQL installations.

Here is how it works:

Installation:

git clone git://github.com/petere/pex.git
cd pex
sudo make install

Install some packages:

pex init
pex install plproxy
pex search hash
pex install pghashlib

Multiple PostgreSQL installations:

pex -g /usr/local/pgsql2 install plproxy
pex -p 5433 install pghashlib

Upgrade:

pex update
pex upgrade

It works a bit like Homebrew, except that it doesn't use Ruby or a lot of metaphors. ;-)

Check it out at https://github.com/petere/pex.