Curious about the decision to merge pg_tde into percona/postgres

[LeoLong0325]

Hi Percona team,

I recently noticed that pg_tde, which was previously available as a standalone extension (percona/pg_tde), is now part of the percona/postgres repository. I was wondering what led to this change.

Does integrating it directly into the PostgreSQL source bring benefits in terms of performance, maintenance, or compatibility? Also, will there still be an option to use pg_tde separately, or is it now fully tied to Percona’s PostgreSQL fork?

Just curious to understand the thought process behind this shift. Thanks for your time and for all the great work you do!

Best regards,

[ImTheKai]

Hi @LeoLong0325,

thanks for reaching out and your question. I think this blog post explains it very well, and should hopefully give more insights into the reasoning.

https://www.percona.com/blog/open-source-postgresql-pg-tde-beta/

Long story short - the future and end goal is to have pg_tde standalone again, which has the full capabilities and brings TDE to Postgres. If there is any chance, to support, the current efforts, to get the needed patched reviewed upstream, this would be extremely helpful.

https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/CALdSSPimrJWeex1RbvVXoGCROLiC6VgKUdEE0pUcib=GNYo58g@mail.gmail.com

For now it's mainly because of maintainability and the need, for the additional patches, to make WAL and index encryption work. It also improves performance significantly, compared to tde_heap_basic.

[LeoLong0325]

Thanks for the explanation and for sharing these resources! The blog post and mailing list discussion provide great insights into the reasoning behind the change.

It’s good to know that the long-term goal is to bring pg_tde back as a standalone extension with full TDE capabilities. I also understand that integrating it into percona/postgres for now helps with maintainability and enables the necessary patches for WAL and index encryption.

I’ll definitely keep an eye on the upstream review process—appreciate all the efforts from the team!

Best,