meson setup build --prefix=/usr/local/pgsql cd build ninja su ninja install adduser postgres mkdir -p /usr/local/pgsql/data chown postgres /usr/local/pgsql/data su - postgres /usr/local/pgsql/bin/initdb -D /usr/local/pgsql/data /usr/local/pgsql/bin/pg_ctl -D /usr/local/pgsql/data -l logfile start /usr/local/pgsql/bin/createdb test /usr/local/pgsql/bin/psql test
The long version is the rest of this section.
Configuration
The first step of the installation procedure is to configure the
build tree for your system and choose the options you would like. To
create and configure the build directory, you can start with the
meson setup command.
meson setup build
The setup command takes a builddir and a srcdir
argument. If no srcdir is given, Meson will deduce the
srcdir based on the current directory and the location
of meson.build. The builddir is mandatory.
Running meson setup loads the build configuration file and sets up the build directory.
Additionally, you can also pass several build options to Meson. Some commonly
used options are mentioned in the subsequent sections. For example:
# configure with a different installation prefix meson setup build --prefix=/home/user/pg-install # configure to generate a debug build meson setup build --buildtype=debug # configure to build with OpenSSL support meson setup build -Dssl=openssl
Setting up the build directory is a one-time step. To reconfigure before a
new build, you can simply use the meson configure command
meson configure -Dcassert=true
meson configure's commonly used command-line options
are explained in Section 17.4.3.
Build
By default, Meson uses the Ninja build tool. To build
PostgreSQL from source using Meson, you can
simply use the ninja command in the build directory.
ninja
Ninja will automatically detect the number of CPUs in your computer and
parallelize itself accordingly. You can override the number of parallel
processes used with the command line argument -j.
It should be noted that after the initial configure step,
ninja is the only command you ever need to type to
compile. No matter how you alter your source tree (short of moving it to a
completely new location), Meson will detect the changes and regenerate
itself accordingly. This is especially handy if you have multiple build
directories. Often one of them is used for development (the "debug" build)
and others only every now and then (such as a "static analysis" build).
Any configuration can be built just by cd'ing to the corresponding
directory and running Ninja.
If you'd like to build with a backend other than ninja, you can use
configure with the --backend option to select the one you
want to use and then build using meson compile. To
learn more about these backends and other arguments you can provide to
ninja, you can refer to the
Meson documentation.
Regression Tests
If you want to test the newly built server before you install it, you can run the regression tests at this point. The regression tests are a test suite to verify that PostgreSQL runs on your machine in the way the developers expected it to. Type:
meson test
(This won't work as root; do it as an unprivileged user.) See Chapter 33 for detailed information about interpreting the test results. You can repeat this test at any later time by issuing the same command.
To run pg_regress and pg_isolation_regress tests against a running
postgres instance, specify --setup running as an
argument to meson test.
Installing the Files
If you are upgrading an existing system be sure to read Section 18.6, which has instructions about upgrading a cluster.
Once PostgreSQL is built, you can install it by simply running the
ninja install command.
ninja install
This will install files into the directories that were specified in Step 1. Make sure that you have appropriate permissions to write into that area. You might need to do this step as root. Alternatively, you can create the target directories in advance and arrange for appropriate permissions to be granted. The standard installation provides all the header files needed for client application development as well as for server-side program development, such as custom functions or data types written in C.
ninja install should work for most cases, but if you'd
like to use more options (such as --quiet to suppress
extra output), you could also use meson install
instead. You can learn more about meson install
and its options in the Meson documentation.
Uninstallation:
To undo the installation, you can use the ninja
uninstall command.
Cleaning:
After the installation, you can free disk space by removing the built
files from the source tree with the ninja clean
command.
meson setup Options #
meson setup's command-line options are explained below.
This list is not exhaustive (use meson configure --help
to get one that is). The options not covered here are meant for advanced
use-cases, and are documented in the standard Meson
documentation. These arguments can be used with meson
setup as well.
These options control where ninja install (or meson install) will put
the files. The --prefix option (example
Section 17.4.1) is sufficient for
most cases. If you have special needs, you can customize the
installation subdirectories with the other options described in this
section. Beware however that changing the relative locations of the
different subdirectories may render the installation non-relocatable,
meaning you won't be able to move it after installation.
(The man and doc locations are
not affected by this restriction.) For relocatable installs, you
might want to use the -Drpath=false option
described later.
--prefix=PREFIX #
Install all files under the directory PREFIX
instead of /usr/local/pgsql (on Unix based systems) or
current drive letter:/usr/local/pgsqlPREFIX directory.
--bindir=DIRECTORY #
Specifies the directory for executable programs. The default
is PREFIX/bin
--sysconfdir=DIRECTORY #
Sets the directory for various configuration files,
PREFIX/etc
--libdir=DIRECTORY #
Sets the location to install libraries and dynamically loadable
modules. The default is
PREFIX/lib
--includedir=DIRECTORY #
Sets the directory for installing C and C++ header files. The
default is PREFIX/include
--datadir=DIRECTORY #
Sets the directory for read-only data files used by the
installed programs. The default is
PREFIX/share
--localedir=DIRECTORY #
Sets the directory for installing locale data, in particular
message translation catalog files. The default is
DATADIR/locale
--mandir=DIRECTORY #
The man pages that come with PostgreSQL will be installed under
this directory, in their respective
man subdirectories.
The default is xDATADIR/man
Care has been taken to make it possible to install
PostgreSQL into shared installation locations
(such as /usr/local/include) without
interfering with the namespace of the rest of the system. First,
the string “/postgresql” is
automatically appended to datadir,
sysconfdir, and docdir,
unless the fully expanded directory name already contains the
string “postgres” or
“pgsql”. For example, if you choose
/usr/local as prefix, the documentation will
be installed in /usr/local/doc/postgresql,
but if the prefix is /opt/postgres, then it
will be in /opt/postgres/doc. The public C
header files of the client interfaces are installed into
includedir and are namespace-clean. The
internal header files and the server header files are installed
into private directories under includedir. See
the documentation of each interface for information about how to
access its header files. Finally, a private subdirectory will
also be created, if appropriate, under libdir
for dynamically loadable modules.
The options described in this section enable building of
various optional PostgreSQL features.
Most of these require additional software, as described in
Section 17.1, and will be automatically enabled if the
required software is found. You can change this behavior by manually
setting these features to enabled to require them
or disabled to not build with them.
To specify PostgreSQL-specific options, the name of the option
must be prefixed by -D.
-Dnls={ auto | enabled | disabled } #Enables or disables Native Language Support (NLS), that is, the ability to display a program's messages in a language other than English. Defaults to auto and will be enabled automatically if an implementation of the Gettext API is found.
-Dplperl={ auto | enabled | disabled } #Build the PL/Perl server-side language. Defaults to auto.
-Dplpython={ auto | enabled | disabled } #Build the PL/Python server-side language. Defaults to auto.
-Dpltcl={ auto | enabled | disabled } #Build the PL/Tcl server-side language. Defaults to auto.
-Dtcl_version=TCL_VERSION #Specifies the Tcl version to use when building PL/Tcl.
-Dicu={ auto | enabled | disabled } #Build with support for the ICU library, enabling use of ICU collation features (see Section 23.2). Defaults to auto and requires the ICU4C package to be installed. The minimum required version of ICU4C is currently 4.2.
-Dllvm={ auto | enabled | disabled } #Build with support for LLVM based JIT compilation (see Chapter 30). This requires the LLVM library to be installed. The minimum required version of LLVM is currently 10. Disabled by default.
llvm-config
will be used to find the required compilation options.
llvm-config, and then
llvm-config-$version for all supported versions,
will be searched for in your PATH. If that would not
yield the desired program, use LLVM_CONFIG to specify a
path to the correct llvm-config.
-Dlz4={ auto | enabled | disabled } #Build with LZ4 compression support. Defaults to auto.
-Dzstd={ auto | enabled | disabled } #Build with Zstandard compression support. Defaults to auto.
-Dssl={ auto | LIBRARY }
#
Build with support for SSL (encrypted) connections.
The only LIBRARY supported is
openssl. This requires the
OpenSSL package to be installed. Building
with this will check for the required header files and libraries to
make sure that your OpenSSL installation is
sufficient before proceeding. The default for this option is auto.
-Dgssapi={ auto | enabled | disabled } #
Build with support for GSSAPI authentication. MIT Kerberos is required
to be installed for GSSAPI. On many systems, the GSSAPI system (a part
of the MIT Kerberos installation) is not installed in a location
that is searched by default (e.g., /usr/include,
/usr/lib). In
those cases, PostgreSQL will query pkg-config to
detect the required compiler and linker options. Defaults to auto.
meson configure will check for the required
header files and libraries to make sure that your GSSAPI installation
is sufficient before proceeding.
-Dldap={ auto | enabled | disabled } #
Build with
LDAP
support for authentication and connection parameter lookup (see
Section 34.18 and
Section 20.10 for more information). On Unix,
this requires the OpenLDAP package to be
installed. On Windows, the default WinLDAP
library is used. Defaults to auto. meson
configure will check for the required header files and
libraries to make sure that your OpenLDAP
installation is sufficient before proceeding.
-Dpam={ auto | enabled | disabled } #Build with PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules) support. Defaults to auto.
-Dbsd_auth={ auto | enabled | disabled } #Build with BSD Authentication support. (The BSD Authentication framework is currently only available on OpenBSD.) Defaults to auto.
-Dsystemd={ auto | enabled | disabled } #Build with support for systemd service notifications. This improves integration if the server is started under systemd but has no impact otherwise; see Section 18.3 for more information. Defaults to auto. libsystemd and the associated header files need to be installed to use this option.
-Dbonjour={ auto | enabled | disabled } #Build with support for Bonjour automatic service discovery. Defaults to auto and requires Bonjour support in your operating system. Recommended on macOS.
-Duuid=LIBRARY #
Build the uuid-ossp module
(which provides functions to generate UUIDs), using the specified
UUID library.
LIBRARY must be one of:
none to not build the uuid module. This is the default.
bsd to use the UUID functions found in FreeBSD,
and some other BSD-derived systems
e2fs to use the UUID library created by
the e2fsprogs project; this library is present in most
Linux systems and in macOS, and can be obtained for other
platforms as well
ossp to use the OSSP UUID library
-Dlibxml={ auto | enabled | disabled } #Build with libxml2, enabling SQL/XML support. Defaults to auto. Libxml2 version 2.6.23 or later is required for this feature.
To use a libxml2 installation that is in an unusual location, you
can set pkg-config-related environment
variables (see its documentation).
-Dlibxslt={ auto | enabled | disabled } #
Build with libxslt, enabling the
xml2
module to perform XSL transformations of XML.
-Dlibxml must be specified as well. Defaults to
auto.
-Dselinux={ auto | enabled | disabled } #Build with SElinux support, enabling the sepgsql extension. Defaults to auto.
-Dreadline={ auto | enabled | disabled } #Allows use of the Readline library (and libedit as well). This option defaults to auto and enables command-line editing and history in psql and is strongly recommended.
-Dlibedit_preferred={ true | false } #Setting this to true favors the use of the BSD-licensed libedit library rather than GPL-licensed Readline. This option is significant only if you have both libraries installed; the default is false, that is to use Readline.
-Dzlib={ auto | enabled | disabled } #Enables use of the Zlib library. It defaults to auto and enables support for compressed archives in pg_dump, pg_restore and pg_basebackup and is recommended.
-Dspinlocks={ true | false } #This option is set to true by default; setting it to false will allow the build to succeed even if PostgreSQL has no CPU spinlock support for the platform. The lack of spinlock support will result in very poor performance; therefore, this option should only be changed if the build aborts and informs you that the platform lacks spinlock support. If setting this option to false is required to build PostgreSQL on your platform, please report the problem to the PostgreSQL developers.
-Datomics={ true | false } #This option is set to true by default; setting it to false will disable use of CPU atomic operations. The option does nothing on platforms that lack such operations. On platforms that do have them, disabling atomics will result in poor performance. Changing this option is only useful for debugging or making performance comparisons.
--auto_features={ auto | enabled | disabled } #Setting this option allows you to override the value of all “auto” features (features that are enabled automatically if the required software is found). This can be useful when you want to disable or enable all the “optional” features at once without having to set each of them manually. The default value for this parameter is auto.
--backend=BACKEND #
The default backend Meson uses is ninja and that should suffice for
most use cases. However, if you'd like to fully integrate with Visual
Studio, you can set the BACKEND to
vs.
-Dc_args=OPTIONS #This option can be used to pass extra options to the C compiler.
-Dc_link_args=OPTIONS #This option can be used to pass extra options to the C linker.
-Dextra_include_dirs=DIRECTORIES #
DIRECTORIES is a comma-separated list of
directories that will be added to the list the compiler searches for
header files. If you have optional packages (such as GNU
Readline) installed in a non-standard
location, you have to use this option and probably also the
corresponding -Dextra_lib_dirs option.
Example: -Dextra_include_dirs=/opt/gnu/include,/usr/sup/include.
-Dextra_lib_dirs=DIRECTORIES #
DIRECTORIES is a comma-separated list of
directories to search for libraries. You will probably have to use
this option (and the corresponding
-Dextra_include_dirs option) if you have packages
installed in non-standard locations.
Example: -Dextra_lib_dirs=/opt/gnu/lib,/usr/sup/lib.
-Dsystem_tzdata=DIRECTORY
#
PostgreSQL includes its own time zone
database, which it requires for date and time operations. This time
zone database is in fact compatible with the IANA time zone database
provided by many operating systems such as FreeBSD, Linux, and
Solaris, so it would be redundant to install it again. When this
option is used, the system-supplied time zone database in
DIRECTORY is used instead of the one
included in the PostgreSQL source distribution.
DIRECTORY must be specified as an absolute
path. /usr/share/zoneinfo is a likely directory
on some operating systems. Note that the installation routine will
not detect mismatching or erroneous time zone data. If you use this
option, you are advised to run the regression tests to verify that the
time zone data you have pointed to works correctly with
PostgreSQL.
This option is mainly aimed at binary package distributors who know their target operating system well. The main advantage of using this option is that the PostgreSQL package won't need to be upgraded whenever any of the many local daylight-saving time rules change. Another advantage is that PostgreSQL can be cross-compiled more straightforwardly if the time zone database files do not need to be built during the installation.
-Dextra_version=STRING #
Append STRING to the PostgreSQL version
number. You can use this, for example, to mark binaries built from
unreleased Git snapshots or containing
custom patches with an extra version string, such as a git
describe identifier or a distribution package release
number.
-Drpath={ true | false } #
This option is set to true by default. If set to false,
do not mark PostgreSQL's executables
to indicate that they should search for shared libraries in the
installation's library directory (see --libdir).
On most platforms, this marking uses an absolute path to the
library directory, so that it will be unhelpful if you relocate
the installation later. However, you will then need to provide
some other way for the executables to find the shared libraries.
Typically this requires configuring the operating system's
dynamic linker to search the library directory; see
Section 17.5.1 for more detail.
-DBINARY_NAME=PATH #
If a program required to build PostgreSQL (with or without optional
flags) is stored at a non-standard path, you can specify it manually
to meson configure. The complete list of programs
for which this is supported can be found by running meson
configure. Example:
meson configure -DBISON=PATH_TO_BISON
See Section J.2 for the tools needed for building the documentation.
-Ddocs={ auto | enabled | disabled } #Enables building the documentation in HTML and man format. It defaults to auto.
-Ddocs_pdf={ auto | enabled | disabled } #Enables building the documentation in PDF format. It defaults to auto.
-Ddocs_html_style={ simple | website } #
Controls which CSS stylesheet is used. The default
is simple. If set to website,
the HTML documentation will reference the stylesheet for postgresql.org.
-Dpgport=NUMBER #
Set NUMBER as the default port number for
server and clients. The default is 5432. The port can always
be changed later on, but if you specify it here then both
server and clients will have the same default compiled in,
which can be very convenient. Usually the only good reason
to select a non-default value is if you intend to run multiple
PostgreSQL servers on the same machine.
-Dkrb_srvnam=NAME #
The default name of the Kerberos service principal used
by GSSAPI.
postgres is the default. There's usually no
reason to change this unless you are building for a Windows
environment, in which case it must be set to upper case
POSTGRES.
-Dsegsize=SEGSIZE #Set the segment size, in gigabytes. Large tables are divided into multiple operating-system files, each of size equal to the segment size. This avoids problems with file size limits that exist on many platforms. The default segment size, 1 gigabyte, is safe on all supported platforms. If your operating system has “largefile” support (which most do, nowadays), you can use a larger segment size. This can be helpful to reduce the number of file descriptors consumed when working with very large tables. But be careful not to select a value larger than is supported by your platform and the file systems you intend to use. Other tools you might wish to use, such as tar, could also set limits on the usable file size. It is recommended, though not absolutely required, that this value be a power of 2.
-Dblocksize=BLOCKSIZE #Set the block size, in kilobytes. This is the unit of storage and I/O within tables. The default, 8 kilobytes, is suitable for most situations; but other values may be useful in special cases. The value must be a power of 2 between 1 and 32 (kilobytes).
-Dwal_blocksize=BLOCKSIZE #Set the WAL block size, in kilobytes. This is the unit of storage and I/O within the WAL log. The default, 8 kilobytes, is suitable for most situations; but other values may be useful in special cases. The value must be a power of 2 between 1 and 64 (kilobytes).
Most of the options in this section are only of interest for
developing or debugging PostgreSQL.
They are not recommended for production builds, except
for --debug, which can be useful to enable
detailed bug reports in the unlucky event that you encounter a bug.
On platforms supporting DTrace, -Ddtrace
may also be reasonable to use in production.
When building an installation that will be used to develop code inside
the server, it is recommended to use at least the --buildtype=debug
and -Dcassert options.
--buildtype=BUILDTYPE #
This option can be used to specify the buildtype to use; defaults to
debugoptimized. If you'd like finer control on the debug
symbols and optimization levels than what this option provides, you
can refer to the --debug and
--optimization flags.
The following build types are generally used: plain,
debug, debugoptimized and
release. More information about them can be found in
the Meson
documentation.
--debug #Compiles all programs and libraries with debugging symbols. This means that you can run the programs in a debugger to analyze problems. This enlarges the size of the installed executables considerably, and on non-GCC compilers it usually also disables compiler optimization, causing slowdowns. However, having the symbols available is extremely helpful for dealing with any problems that might arise. Currently, this option is recommended for production installations only if you use GCC. But you should always have it on if you are doing development work or running a beta version.
--optimization=LEVEL #
Specify the optimization level. LEVEL can be set to any of {0,g,1,2,3,s}.
--werror #Setting this option asks the compiler to treat warnings as errors. This can be useful for code development.
-Dcassert={ true | false } #Enables assertion checks in the server, which test for many “cannot happen” conditions. This is invaluable for code development purposes, but the tests slow down the server significantly. Also, having the tests turned on won't necessarily enhance the stability of your server! The assertion checks are not categorized for severity, and so what might be a relatively harmless bug will still lead to server restarts if it triggers an assertion failure. This option is not recommended for production use, but you should have it on for development work or when running a beta version.
-Dtap_tests={ auto | enabled | disabled } #
Enable tests using the Perl TAP tools. Defaults to auto and requires
a Perl installation and the Perl module IPC::Run.
See Section 33.4 for more information.
-DPG_TEST_EXTRA=TEST_SUITES #Enable test suites which require special software to run. This option accepts arguments via a whitespace-separated list. See Section 33.1.3 for details.
-Db_coverage={ true | false } #If using GCC, all programs and libraries are compiled with code coverage testing instrumentation. When run, they generate files in the build directory with code coverage metrics. See Section 33.5 for more information. This option is for use only with GCC and when doing development work.
-Ddtrace={ auto | enabled | disabled } #Enabling this compiles PostgreSQL with support for the dynamic tracing tool DTrace. See Section 27.5 for more information.
To point to the dtrace program, the
DTRACE option can be set. This
will often be necessary because dtrace is
typically installed under /usr/sbin,
which might not be in your PATH.
-Dinjection_points={ true | false } #Compiles PostgreSQL with support for injection points in the server. Injection points allow to run user-defined code from within the server in pre-defined code paths. This helps in testing and in the investigation of concurrency scenarios in a controlled fashion. This option is disabled by default. See Section 38.10.13 for more details. This option is intended to be used only by developers for testing.
-Dsegsize_blocks=SEGSIZE_BLOCKS #
Specify the relation segment size in blocks. If both
-Dsegsize and this option are specified, this option
wins.
This option is only for developers, to test segment related code.
meson Build Targets #
Individual build targets can be built using ninja target.
When no target is specified, everything except documentation is
built. Individual build products can be built using the path/filename as
target.
html #Build documentation in multi-page HTML format
man #Build documentation in man page format
docs #Build documentation in multi-page HTML and man page format
doc/src/sgml/postgres-A4.pdf #Build documentation in PDF format, with A4 pages
doc/src/sgml/postgres-US.pdf #Build documentation in PDF format, with US letter pages
doc/src/sgml/postgres.html #Build documentation in single-page HTML format
alldocs #Build documentation in all supported formats
install #Install postgres, excluding documentation
install-docs #Install documentation in multi-page HTML and man page formats
install-html #Install documentation in multi-page HTML format
install-man #Install documentation in man page format
install-quiet #Like "install", but installed files are not displayed
install-world #Install postgres, including multi-page HTML and man page documentation
uninstall #Remove installed files