Hey everyone, I work on PGlite. Excited to see this on HN again.

If you have any questions I'll be sure to answer them.

We recently crossed a massive usage milestone with over 3M weekly downloads (we're nearly at 4M!) - see https://www.npmjs.com/package/@electric-sql/pglite

While we originally built this for embedding into web apps, we have seen enormous growth in devtools and developer environments - both Google Firebase and Prisma have embedded PGlite into their CLIs to emulate their server products.

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mpweiher 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This looks really interesting...but why WASM-only? Naively it seems like WASM-ification would be a 2nd step, after lib-ification.

Obviously missing something...

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OvbiousError 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If I understand correctly, what this project does is take the actual postgresql sources, which are written in C, compile them to wasm and provide typescript wrappers. So you need the wasm to be able to use the C code from js/ts.

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mpweiher 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes. I would like to use the code as a library from something other than js/ts.

	▲	mirrir 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		You can use it in Rust if you like. I've used pglite through wasmer before. Also [pglite-oxide](https://lib.rs/crates/pglite-oxide) is pretty usable.
	▲	embedding-shape 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Sounds you only need to create the APIs for calling into WASM if so, so as long as your language of choice can do that, you're good to go.
	▲	monster_truck 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		So compile it and use it?

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intrasight 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

WASM means you only need to develop for one target run time. That's my guess as to why.

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saurik 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah... I was super excited by this project when it was first announced--and would even use it from Wasm--but since it ONLY works in Wasm, that seemed way too niche.

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JackC 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Thanks for your work!

Is the project interested in supporting http-vfs readonly usecases? I'm thinking of tools like DuckDB or sql.js-httpvfs that support reading blocks from a remote url via range requests.

Curious because we build stuff like this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45774571 at my lab, and the current ecosystem for http-vfs is very slim — a lot of proofs of concept, not many widely used and optimized libraries.

I have no idea if this makes sense for postgres — are the disk access patterns better or worse for http-vfs in postgres than they are in sqlite?

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sgt 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Any chance for a Flutter library?

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glenjamin 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Does pglite in memory outperform “normal” postgres?

If so then supporting the network protocol so it could be run in CI for non-JS languages could be really cool

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jitl 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Look into libeatmydata LD_PRELOAD. it disables fsync and other durability syscalls, fabulous for ci. Materialize.com uses it for their ci that’s where i learned about it.

	▲	4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		[deleted]

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allan_s 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

for CI you can already use postgresql with "eat-my-data" library ? I don't know if there's more official image , but in my company we're using https://github.com/allan-simon/postgres-eatmydata

	▲	anarazel 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You can just set fsync=off if you don't want to flush to disk and are ok with corruption in case of a OS/hw level crash.

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phplovesong 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This looks REALLY awesome. Could you name a few usecases when i would want to use this. Is the goal to be an sqlite/duckdb alternative?

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nnnnico 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is awesome, thanks for your work! Could this work with the file system api in the bowser to write to user disk instead of indexeddb? I'm interested in easy ways for syncing fot local-first single user stuff <3 thanks again

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mentalgear 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yupp, this has big potential for local-first !

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DonnyV 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I see you guys are working on supporting the postgis extension. This would be HUGE!!! The gis community would be all over this.

If anyone wants to help out who has compiled the postgis extension and is familiar with WASM. You can help out here. https://github.com/electric-sql/pglite/pull/807

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TheDataMaverick 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Amazing work! It makes setting up CI so much easier.

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lame_lexem 7 hours ago | parent [-]

huh. could you tell how you use it in ci?

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tln 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm using it for a service that has DB dependencies. Instead of using SQLite in tests and PG in production, or spinning up a Postgres container, you use Postgres via pglite.

In my case, the focus is on DX ie faster tests. I load shared database from `pglite-schema.tgz` (~1040ms) instead of running migrations from a fresh DB and then use transaction rollback isolation (~10ms per test).

This is a lot faster and more convenient than spinning up a container. Test runs are 5x faster.

I'm hoping to get this working on a python service soon as well (with py-pglite).

	▲	TheTaytay 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Thank you for the details. This makes a lot of sense!

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reachableceo 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Well downloads doesn’t equal usage does it ?

How do you know how many deployments you actually have in the wild?

	▲	pixelatedindex 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		True downloads don’t equal usage but there’s a correlation. I also doubt deployment equals usage - I can deploy to some env and not make any requests. Additionally, how you can get data on how many deployments without telemetry? The only telemetry that I’m interested in is for my uses, and don’t really care about sending data on deployment count to a third party. So the download count becomes a “good enough” metric.

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oulipo2 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm interested to use Pglite for local unit-testing, but I'm using timescaledb in prod, do you think you will have this extension pre-built for Pglite?

	▲	tdrz 8 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		We have a walk-through on porting extensions to PGlite: https://pglite.dev/extensions/development#building-postgres-...
	▲	samwillis 8 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		I'm not aware of anything trying to compile timescale for it. Some extensions are easer than other, if there is limited (or ideally no) network IO and its written in C (Timescale is!) with minimal dependencies then its a little easer to get them working.
	▲	rel 8 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I’ve had incredible success with testcontainers for local unit-testing