Problems with PostgreSQL JIT

Since version 11 PostgreSQL can use Just-in-Time Compilation (JIT) to speed up processing. But unfortunately using JIT can make osm2pgsql slower.

If JIT is enabled, there is a problem in how the query planner in PostgreSQL handles certain queries from osm2pgsql leading to massive slowdowns. This is only a problem for updates, initial imports are fine. On PostgreSQL 11 JIT is still disabled by default, so you are not likely to see it there, but since version 12 JIT is usually enabled. The problem was noticed and diagnosed and we added code in release 1.3.0 that was supposed to disable JIT in PostgreSQL for our database connections. Unfortunately this code had a bug and JIT was never disabled.

The next release will have a fix for this, but in the mean time the recommendation is to manually disable JIT when running osm2pgsql. You can either do this by setting these in your PostgreSQL config:

jit = off
max_parallel_workers_per_gather = 0

Or, if you only want to disable this when running osm2pgsql, set the environment variable PGOPTIONS before calling osm2pgsql with something like this:

export PGOPTIONS="-c jit=off -c max_parallel_workers_per_gather=0"