Thread

glob support in extension_control_path/dynamic_library_path?

Jakob Egger <jakob@eggerapps.at> — 2026-05-29T12:26:59Z

Hello!

The extension_control_path setting allowed us to offer precompiled downloadable extensions for Postgres.app: https://postgresapp.com/extensions/

We install extensions each into their own path, for example:

/Users/USER/Library/Application Support/Postgres/Extensions/18/http
/Users/USER/Library/Application Support/Postgres/Extensions/18/pg_cron
....

This allows us to update extensions by just deleting the folder and installing the new version -- we don't need to track all the files belonging to an extension. If we put all separately downloaded extensions in a single directory we would be very likely to end up with orphaned files sooner or later.

However, this leads to a rather lengthy configuration that needs to be updated whenever an extension is installed:

extension_control_path="$system:/Users/jakob/Library/Application Support/Postgres/Extensions/18/pg_parquet/share/postgresql:/Users/jakob/Library/Application Support/Postgres/Extensions/18/pg_cron/share/postgresql:/Users/jakob/Library/Application Support/Postgres/Extensions/18/http/share/postgresql:/Users/jakob/Library/Application Support/Postgres/Extensions/18/timescaledb/share/postgresql:/Users/jakob/Library/Application Support/Postgres/Extensions/18/plv8/share/postgresql:/Users/jakob/Library/Application Support/Postgres/Extensions/18/pg_search/share/postgresql"

It would be really nice if we could just use glob patterns like this:

extension_control_path="$system:/Users/jakob/Library/Application Support/Postgres/Extensions/18/*/share/postgresql"
dynamic_library_path="$libdir:/Users/jakob/Library/Application Support/Postgres/Extensions/18/*/lib/postgresql"

This would also have the advantage of not requiring a server restart after installing an extension.

I believe this would also be useful for Docker use case mentioned in the original thread (https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/E7C7BFFB-8857-48D4-A71F-88B359FADCFD%40justatheory.com) when multiple extensions are used

I have tried implementing this patch myself, and it was pretty straightforward to implement a proof of concept.

I wonder if such an addition would be useful for other packagers?

Best regards,
Jakob