Postgres 18 (Debian)

PostgreSQL 18 Docker images built on postgres:18-bookworm, published to GitHub Container Registry under a single package with variant tags.

Images

All images are published as:

ghcr.io/zhyporium/postgres:<tag>

Tag	Variant	Extra extensions
18	Vanilla Postgres 18	—
18_pgvector	pgvector	vector
18_timescale	TimescaleDB	timescaledb
18_vt	pgvector + TimescaleDB	vector, timescaledb

Included on every variant

These are enabled automatically on first database init:

• pg_stat_statements (preloaded)
• pg_trgm
• unaccent

Variant-specific extensions are created via init SQL in /docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/. Init scripts only run on a fresh data directory.

Pull and run

docker pull ghcr.io/zhyporium/postgres:18
docker pull ghcr.io/zhyporium/postgres:18_pgvector
docker pull ghcr.io/zhyporium/postgres:18_timescale
docker pull ghcr.io/zhyporium/postgres:18_vt

docker run -d \
  --name postgres \
  -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=yourpassword \
  -p 5432:5432 \
  -v postgres_data:/var/lib/postgresql \
  ghcr.io/zhyporium/postgres:18_pgvector

Connect:

psql "postgresql://postgres:yourpassword@localhost:5432/postgres"

When to use which variant

Tag	Use case
18	General-purpose OLTP / app databases
18_pgvector	Semantic search, embeddings, RAG
18_timescale	Time-series metrics, IoT, events queried by time range
18_vt	Apps that need both vector search and time-series in one database

Examples

Docker Compose templates for each variant live in examples/. Each folder pulls a published GHCR image — nothing is built locally.

cd examples/18_vt
cp .env.example .env
docker compose up -d

See examples/README.md for the full list (18, 18_pgvector, 18_timescale, 18_vt).

Local build

Build context for all variants is docker/18:

docker build -f docker/18/Dockerfile -t postgres:18 docker/18
docker build -f docker/18/pgvector/Dockerfile -t postgres:18_pgvector docker/18
docker build -f docker/18/timescale/Dockerfile -t postgres:18_timescale docker/18
docker build -f docker/18/pgvector-timescale/Dockerfile -t postgres:18_vt docker/18

Validate locally

Build, start, and check extensions for every variant:

./scripts/validate-images.sh

Existing data volumes are not reconfigured when you pull a newer image. pg_hba.conf and init extensions only apply on first init. To pick up changes from this repo on an existing deployment, recreate the volume or apply the config manually.

Security

On first init, pg_hba.conf requires scram-sha-256 for all connections (no trust rules). Compose examples bind port 5432 to 127.0.0.1 only, require POSTGRES_PASSWORD in .env, and pin images by digest via POSTGRES_IMAGE. After CI publishes new images, run ./scripts/pin-example-images.sh to refresh example digests (CI also prints the digest in the workflow summary).

Traffic is not encrypted in transit. Use a TLS-terminating proxy for production deployments exposed beyond localhost.

CI/CD

GitHub Actions builds and pushes multi-arch images (linux/amd64, linux/arm64) to GHCR. Each variant has its own workflow under .github/workflows/; only changed images are rebuilt on push to main.

Workflow	Triggers on
build-postgres.yml	docker/18/Dockerfile, docker/18/common/**
build-postgres-pgvector.yml	docker/18/pgvector/**, docker/18/common/**
build-postgres-timescale.yml	docker/18/timescale/**, docker/18/common/**
build-postgres-pgvector-timescale.yml	docker/18/pgvector-timescale/**, docker/18/common/**

Workflows can also be run manually via workflow_dispatch.

Project layout

docker/18/
├── Dockerfile                 # vanilla (tag: 18)
├── common/
│   ├── 01-pg_hba.sh             # pg_hba on first init
│   ├── pg_hba.conf
│   ├── install-timescale.sh
│   └── 01-default-extensions.sql
├── pgvector/
├── timescale/
└── pgvector-timescale/        # tag: 18_vt

examples/                      # compose templates (GHCR pull)
├── 18/compose.yml
├── 18_pgvector/compose.yml
├── 18_timescale/compose.yml
└── 18_vt/compose.yml

.github/workflows/             # per-variant CI
scripts/validate-images.sh     # local smoke tests
scripts/pin-example-images.sh  # refresh digest-pinned example images

License

MIT — Dockerfiles and scripts in this repository.

Bundled software (PostgreSQL, pgvector, TimescaleDB, etc.) remains under its respective upstream licenses.