ParadeDB Dockerfiles

ParadeDB's Dockerfiles are automatically generated from Dockerfile.template. To make a change to the files, modify Dockerfile.template, run ./generate-dockerfiles.sh <<current-version>>, and commit the generated changes.

Generated Images

There are three flavors of files generated:

• paradedb: The default ParadeDB Docker image, published to paradedb/paradedb. Includes Barman Cloud which is used in our CNPG deployments.
• official: The image for Docker Official Images which will be published to paradedb once approved by Docker. Does not include Barman.
• antithesis: The image used by Antithesis test runs. Its pg_search is built with Antithesis coverage instrumentation (see docs/reference/sdk/rust/instrumentation); libvoidstar is injected at runtime rather than baked into the image.

paradedb and official both install Debian artifacts published to GitHub Releases. antithesis installs a locally built .deb so that it can be run on a per-commit basis.

Extension Image

Dockerfile.extension is not generated from the template — it is a standalone, hand-maintained Dockerfile. Unlike the runnable images above, it builds a non-runnable FROM scratch artifact (paradedb/paradedb-extension) that is meant to be mounted into a Postgres container by operators that support extension images — e.g. CloudNativePG, following the cloudnative-pg/postgres-extensions-containers <version>-<pg-major>-<distro> tag convention. It requires PostgreSQL 18+ (which introduced extension_control_path) and is built and published at release time alongside the runnable images by publish-paradedb-docker.yml.

The payload is laid out as lib/ (pg_search.so), share/extension/ (control file and SQL scripts), licenses/, and system/ — the system libraries pg_search links that the Postgres base image lacks (libopenblas, libgfortran). Consumers must put system/ on LD_LIBRARY_PATH, since dynamic_library_path finds the module but not the libraries it needs. Under CloudNativePG that is ld_library_path: [system] on the extension:

postgresql:
  shared_preload_libraries:
    - pg_search
  extensions:
    - name: pg_search
      image:
        reference: paradedb/paradedb-extension:0.25.0-18-trixie
      ld_library_path:
        - system

pg_search requires vector, so pgvector must be mounted as an extension image alongside it (or otherwise be available to the Postgres image).

Release Process

Because the Dockerfiles depend on the Debian artifacts, they are published after the latest .debs are published to GitHub. The Dockerfiles themselves can't be updated until the latest .debs exist. Because of this, once a release is triggered and the .debs are published, new versions of the Dockerfiles are generated in CI using the latest version. These new versions are then tested and published, and PRs are automatically opened to commit the updated files back to the repo. The files must be committed so they can be referenced by the Docker Official Images manifest file in docker-library/official-images.