ATatombender·Jul 5, 2025
You can with the pg_hint_plan extension: https://github.com/ossc-db/pg_hint_plan
In How often is the query plan optimal?ossc-db
pg_hint_plan
C2019–2025
ossc-db / pg_hint_plan
pg_hint_plan
Extension adding support for optimizer hints in PostgreSQL
13Distinct people
17Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
929GitHub stars
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Extension adding support for optimizer hints in PostgreSQL
GitHub
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This week on Hacker News
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HN mentions by year17 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2019-10-28 14:52:28 UTC to 2025-07-05 12:21:34 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 2 | 4 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 1 | 4 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
17 sourcesPostgreSQL has coarse-grain query hints (like `enable_hashjoin`), and the excellent `pg_hint_plan` extension allows you to specify a complete or partial execution plan: https://github.com/ossc-db/pg_hint_plan
In Ten years of improvements in PostgreSQL's optimizerGuessing you've seen this already and it's not doing what you want?
https://github.com/ossc-db/pg_hint_plan
In Show HN: PostgreSQL index advisorOkay so it isn't entirely clear to me, can the pg_hint_plan extension (linked in the OP) do the simple thing where we specify, for each table, which index to use?
I can't find it here
https://github.com/ossc-db/pg_hint_plan/blob/master/docs/hin...
Because, the mssql WITH(INDEX()) is simple and intuitive. This hint table stuff seems complicated, and it's unclear to me if they can do the simple thing
(Note: WITH(INDEX()) is different than specifying whether you will do SeqScan or IndexScan. it's, like, in SQL we can give a name to an index or to a constraint, and one may want to be able to do IndexScan, yes, but with a specific named index)
In Pg_hint_plan: Force PostgreSQL to execute query plans the way you wantPg_hint_plan: Force PostgreSQL to execute query plans the way you want
92 points · Open discussionpg_hint_plan —— Give PostgreSQL ability to manually force some decisions in execution plans. https://github.com/ossc-db/pg_hint_plan
In Postgres is eating the database worldPostgreSQL famously does not support plan hints
I really wish the PostgreSQL core team would acknowledge that their stance on that hurts more than helps. Even Oracle with decades of engineering behind it doesn't get execution plans correct 100% of the time and provides a way to tune query execution via hints.
However, TIL that https://github.com/ossc-db/pg_hint_plan exists so that will probably become a standard thing I deploy.
In 10,000x Speedup for Postgres Queries: How to Make a Smart Optimizer More Stupidthere is a maintained index hint extension: https://github.com/ossc-db/pg_hint_plan - at least as far as 13 (and likely 14).
if we're going to talk about index functionality that would be good and effective for Postgres, an index across all partitioned tables (both normal and unique) would be very much welcomed.
the problem is finding someone to maintain it for life.
In How Postgres chooses which index to use for a queryPg_hint_plan – Use planner hints on PostgreSQL
13 points · Open discussionOther databases have optimizer hints for that, but apparently there’s resistance to adding hints into Postgres [1]. I find hints very useful (in Oracle world) for quickly working around some optimizer glitch (and figure out the long term solution later).
There actually is a “pg_hint_plan” [2] Postgres module that adds some hints to Postgres optimizer (but it’s not part of Postgres core as I understand):
[1] https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/OptimizerHintsDiscussion
[2] https://github.com/ossc-db/pg_hint_plan
In A Hairy PostgreSQL IncidentYou can use pg_hint_plan for hinting query plans to postgres: https://github.com/ossc-db/pg_hint_plan
In Tricking PostgreSQL into using an insane, but faster, query planThere's now a github repo for pg_hint_plan: https://github.com/ossc-db/pg_hint_plan
In Tricking PostgreSQL into using an insane, but faster, query planThe pg_hint_plan is now being developed on github: https://github.com/ossc-db/pg_hint_plan
I recently put up a PR for a README, you can read it here: https://github.com/ossc-db/pg_hint_plan/blob/8a00e70c387fc07...
In Things I hate about PostgreSQL (2020)Showing the 15 most recent of 17 sources. Enable JavaScript to search and browse every indexed mention.