Installing an extension from PGXN

The PostgreSQL Extension Network provides a platform-independent tool to install PostgreSQL extensions. This tool is written in Python, and uses the Python installation system for distribution of itself. This is handy because the Python distribution system exists virtually on every PostgreSQL supportable platform and makes it very simple to get PostgreSQL extensions distributed to the community. The extension installer works with a single set of instructions on all targets:

easy_install pgxnclient
Installing pgxncli.py script to /usr/local/bin
Installing pgxn script to /usr/local/bin
Processing dependencies for pgxnclient
Finished processing dependencies for pgxnclient

Now you have the tools installed to manage PostgreSQL extensions provided by the PostgreSQL Extension Network.

Installing extensions is not really simple. For example, if we had a requirement to use a new tinyint data type, we could add it with this command:

pgxn install tinyint
INFO: best...