Additional Supplied Modules

This appendix and the next one contain information regarding the modules that can be found in the contrib directory of the PostgreSQL distribution. These include porting tools, analysis utilities, and plug-in features that are not part of the core PostgreSQL system, mainly because they address a limited audience or are too experimental to be part of the main source tree. This does not preclude their usefulness.

This appendix covers extensions and other server plug-in modules found in contrib. contrib-prog covers utility programs.

When building from the source distribution, these components are not built automatically, unless you build the «world» target (see build). You can build and install all of them by running:

makemake install
in the **contrib** directory of a configured source tree;

or to build and install just one selected module, do the same in that module’s subdirectory. Many of the modules have regression tests, which can be executed by running:

make check
before installation or

make installcheck
once you have a **PostgreSQL** server running.

If you are using a pre-packaged version of PostgreSQL, these modules are typically made available as a separate subpackage, such as postgresql-contrib.

Many modules supply new user-defined functions, operators, or types. To make use of one of these modules, after you have installed the code you need to register the new SQL objects in the database system. This is done by executing a sql-createextension command. In a fresh database, you can simply do

CREATE EXTENSION module_name;

This command registers the new SQL objects in the current database only, so you need to run it in each database that you want the module’s facilities to be available in. Alternatively, run it in database template1 so that the extension will be copied into subsequently-created databases by default.

For all these modules, CREATE EXTENSION must be run by a database superuser, unless the module is considered trusted, in which case it can be run by any user who has CREATE privilege on the current database. Modules that are trusted are identified as such in the sections that follow. Generally, trusted modules are ones that cannot provide access to outside-the-database functionality.

Many modules allow you to install their objects in a schema of your choice. To do that, add SCHEMA schema_name to the CREATE EXTENSION command. By default, the objects will be placed in your current creation target schema, which in turn defaults to public.

Note, however, that some of these modules are not extensions in this sense, but are loaded into the server in some other way, for instance by way of guc-shared-preload-libraries. See the documentation of each module for details.

Additional Supplied Programs

This appendix and the previous one contain information regarding the modules that can be found in the contrib directory of the PostgreSQL distribution. See contrib for more information about the contrib section in general and server extensions and plug-ins found in contrib specifically.

This appendix covers utility programs found in contrib. Once installed, either from source or a packaging system, they are found in the bin directory of the PostgreSQL installation and can be used like any other program.

10.146. Client Applications

This section covers PostgreSQL client applications in contrib. They can be run from anywhere, independent of where the database server resides. See also reference-client for information about client applications that are part of the core PostgreSQL distribution.

10.147. Server Applications

Some applications run on the PostgreSQL server itself. Currently, no such applications are included in the contrib directory. See also reference-server for information about server applications that are part of the core PostgreSQL distribution.