pgrust: Postgres Rewritten in Rust, Passing All Regression Tests

Introduction

pgrust is a groundbreaking project that re-implements the PostgreSQL database in Rust. It targets full compatibility with Postgres 18.3 and has achieved a significant milestone, passing 100% of the Postgres regression test suite. The project's core goal is to simplify internal modifications to Postgres, leveraging Rust's safety and performance, along with AI-assisted programming, to explore deeper server changes. pgrust is also disk compatible with Postgres, allowing it to boot from existing Postgres 18.3 data directories. An upcoming version promises a thread-per-connection model, 50% faster transaction workloads, and ~300x faster analytical workloads compared to Postgres.

Installation

You can try pgrust using Docker or by building it from source.

Docker:

To quickly run pgrust with Docker, use the following commands:

docker run -d --name pgrust -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=secret malisper/pgrust:v0.1 && until docker exec -e PGPASSWORD=secret pgrust psql -h 127.0.0.1 -U postgres -c '\q' >/dev/null 2>&1; do sleep 1; done && docker exec -it -e PGPASSWORD=secret pgrust psql -h 127.0.0.1 -U postgres; docker rm -f pgrust

This command will start a pgrust container, wait for it to be ready, connect using psql inside the container, and then remove the container.

Build From Source (macOS):

First, install dependencies:

brew install icu4c openssl@3 libpq

export LIBRARY_PATH="$(brew --prefix openssl@3)/lib:${LIBRARY_PATH:-}"
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="$(brew --prefix openssl@3)/lib/pkgconfig:$(brew --prefix icu4c)/lib/pkgconfig:${PKG_CONFIG_PATH:-}"
export PATH="$(brew --prefix libpq)/bin:$PATH"

Build From Source (Debian/Ubuntu):

Install dependencies:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y build-essential pkg-config libicu-dev libssl-dev libldap2-dev libpam0g-dev postgresql-client-18

Build pgrust:

PGRUST_PGSHAREDIR="$PWD/vendor/postgres-18.3/share" \
cargo build --release --locked --bin postgres

Examples

After building from source, you can create a data directory and run pgrust.

Create a data directory:

target/release/postgres --initdb \
  -D /tmp/pgrust-data \
  -L "$PWD/vendor/postgres-18.3/share" \
  --no-locale \
  --encoding UTF8 \
  -U postgres

Run pgrust:

ulimit -s 65520

RUST_MIN_STACK=33554432 target/release/postgres \
  -D /tmp/pgrust-data \
  -F \
  -c listen_addresses= \
  -k /tmp \
  -p 5432 \
  -c io_method=sync \
  -c max_stack_depth=60000

Connect to pgrust:

psql -h /tmp -p 5432 -U postgres -d postgres \
  -c "select version(), 1 + 1 as two"

You can also try the WebAssembly demo directly in your browser.

Why Use pgrust?

pgrust offers a fresh perspective on database development, aiming to overcome some of the traditional challenges with Postgres internals. Its roadmap includes exciting features like multithreaded Postgres internals, built-in connection pooling, improved JSON workload support, fast forking and branching workflows, and storage experiments with no-vacuum designs. By rewriting Postgres in Rust, the project seeks to enhance performance, maintainability, and introduce innovative features that are harder to implement in the original C codebase. While not yet production-ready, its progress in passing all regression tests and demonstrating significant speedups makes it a project to watch for future database solutions.

Links

• GitHub Repository: https://github.com/malisper/pgrust
• Browser Demo: https://pgrust.com
• Discord Community: https://discord.gg/FZZ4dbdvwU
• Get Updates: https://pgrust.com/#updates