Getting ready

First, you'll need to select an appropriate module to install.

The journey toward a complete, automated package management system for PostgreSQL is not over yet, so you need to look in more than one place for the available modules, such as the following:

• Contrib: The PostgreSQL core includes many functions. There is also an official section for add-in modules, known as contrib modules. They are always available for your database server, but are not automatically enabled in every database, because not all users might need them. In PostgreSQL version 10, we have 59 such modules. These are documented at http://www.postgresql.org/docs/10/static/contrib.html.
• PGXN: This is the PostgreSQL Extension Network, a central distribution system dedicated to sharing PostgreSQL extensions. The website started in 2010 as a repository dedicated to the sharing of extension files. By 2017 there were more than 220 extensions from 239 different authors. You can learn more about it at http://pgxn.org/.
• Separate projects: These are large external projects, such as PostGIS, offering extensive and complex PostgreSQL modules. For more information, take a look at http://www.postgis.org/.