Installation

lantern_hnsw is a Postgres extension that provides vector search inside Postgres.

Lantern builds and uses usearch, a single-header state-of-the-art HNSW implementation.

It is available as a Docker image, a Homebrew package, a binary, or from source.

Run with Docker

For convenience, we provide the Lantern Suite Docker image, which includes both Lantern and Lantern Extras. This enables both vector search and vector generation inside Postgres.

docker run -p 5432:5432 --name lantern-demo -e 'POSTGRES_PASSWORD=postgres' -d lanterndata/lantern-suite:pg15-latest

Alternatively, to install only Lantern for vector search, we provide the Lantern Docker image.

docker run -p 5432:5432 --name lantern-demo -e 'POSTGRES_PASSWORD=postgres' -d lanterndata/lantern:pg15-latest

Note: The image is based on the official Postgres docker image. Please refer to the Postgres image documentation for a full list of supported features and flags.

Install From Binaries

Prerequisites

• PostgreSQL 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17

Supported platforms

• Linux (x86_64)
• Mac (intel)

Installation

Use our releases from GitHub.

Note: You can replace LDB_VERSION with the version you want to install

cd /tmp
LDB_VERSION=0.4.1
wget "https://github.com/lanterndata/lantern/releases/download/v${LDB_VERSION}/lantern-${LDB_VERSION}.tar"
tar xf "lantern-${LDB_VERSION}.tar"
cd "lantern-${LDB_VERSION}"
make install

Install From Homebrew

Prerequisites

• Homebrew

Supported platforms

• Mac

Installation

brew tap lanterndata/lantern
brew install lantern && lantern_install

Install From Source

Prerequisites

• cmake version: >=3.3
• gcc && g++ version: >=11 when building portable binaries, >= 12 when building on new hardware or with CPU-specific vectorization
• PostgreSQL 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, or 17
• Corresponding development package for PostgreSQL (postgresql-server-dev-$version)

Supported platforms

• Linux
• Mac

Installation

To build Lantern on new hardware or with CPU-specific vectorization:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/lanterndata/lantern.git
cd lantern
cmake -DMARCH_NATIVE=ON -S lantern_hnsw -B build
make -C build install -j

To build portable Lantern binaries:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/lanterndata/lantern.git
cd lantern
cmake -DMARCH_NATIVE=OFF -S lantern_hnsw -B build
make -C build install -j

If you have previously cloned Lantern and would like to update, run git pull && git submodule update --recursive

Post Installation

If you are not on Lantern Cloud, make sure you enable the extension after following the installation steps for Lantern.

CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS lantern;