In general, a modern Unix-compatible platform should be able to run
PostgreSQL™.
The platforms that had received specific testing at the
time of release are listed in the section called “Supported Platforms”
below. In the doc
subdirectory of the distribution
there are several platform-specific FAQ documents you
might wish to consult if you are having trouble.
The following software packages are required for building PostgreSQL™:
GNU make version 3.80 or newer is required; other
make programs or older GNU make versions will not work.
(GNU make is sometimes installed under
the name gmake
.) To test for GNU
make enter:
make --version
You need an ISO/ANSI C compiler (at least C89-compliant). Recent versions of GCC™ are recommended, but PostgreSQL™ is known to build using a wide variety of compilers from different vendors.
tar is required to unpack the source distribution, in addition to either gzip or bzip2.
The GNU Readline™ library is used by
default. It allows psql (the
PostgreSQL command line SQL interpreter) to remember each
command you type, and allows you to use arrow keys to recall and
edit previous commands. This is very helpful and is strongly
recommended. If you don't want to use it then you must specify
the --without-readline
option to
configure
. As an alternative, you can often use the
BSD-licensed libedit
library, originally
developed on NetBSD™. The
libedit
library is
GNU Readline™-compatible and is used if
libreadline
is not found, or if
--with-libedit-preferred
is used as an
option to configure
. If you are using a package-based
Linux distribution, be aware that you need both the
readline
and readline-devel
packages, if
those are separate in your distribution.
The zlib™ compression library is
used by default. If you don't want to use it then you must
specify the --without-zlib
option to
configure
. Using this option disables
support for compressed archives in pg_dump and
pg_restore.
The following packages are optional. They are not required in the default configuration, but they are needed when certain build options are enabled, as explained below:
To build the server programming language
PL/Perl you need a full
Perl™ installation, including the
libperl
library and the header files.
Since PL/Perl will be a shared
library, the
libperl
library must be a shared library
also on most platforms. This appears to be the default in
recent Perl™ versions, but it was not
in earlier versions, and in any case it is the choice of whomever
installed Perl at your site.
If you intend to make more than incidental use of
PL/Perl, you should ensure that the
Perl™ installation was built with the
usemultiplicity
option enabled (perl -V
will show whether this is the case).
If you don't have the shared library but you need one, a message like this will appear during the PostgreSQL™ build to point out this fact:
*** Cannot build PL/Perl because libperl is not a shared library. *** You might have to rebuild your Perl installation. Refer to *** the documentation for details.
(If you don't follow the on-screen output you will merely notice
that the PL/Perl library object,
plperl.so
or similar, will not be
installed.) If you see this, you will have to rebuild and
install Perl™ manually to be able to
build PL/Perl. During the
configuration process for Perl™,
request a shared library.
To build the PL/Python server programming
language, you need a Python™
installation with the header files and
the distutils module. The minimum
required version is Python™ 2.3.
(To work with function arguments of type numeric, a 2.3.x
installation must include the separately-available cdecimal
module; note the PL/Python regression tests
will not pass if that is missing.)
Python 3™ is supported if it's
version 3.1 or later; but see
the section called “Python 2 vs. Python 3”
when using Python 3.
Since PL/Python will be a shared
library, the
libpython
library must be a shared library
also on most platforms. This is not the case in a default
Python™ installation. If after
building and installing PostgreSQL™ you have a file called
plpython.so
(possibly a different
extension), then everything went well. Otherwise you should
have seen a notice like this flying by:
*** Cannot build PL/Python because libpython is not a shared library. *** You might have to rebuild your Python installation. Refer to *** the documentation for details.
That means you have to rebuild (part of) your Python™ installation to create this shared library.
If you have problems, run Python™ 2.3 or later's
configure using the --enable-shared
flag. On some
operating systems you don't have to build a shared library, but
you will have to convince the PostgreSQL™ build
system of this. Consult the Makefile
in
the src/pl/plpython
directory for details.
To build the PL/Tcl procedural language, you of course need a Tcl™ installation. If you are using a pre-8.4 release of Tcl™, ensure that it was built without multithreading support.
To enable Native Language Support (NLS), that
is, the ability to display a program's messages in a language
other than English, you need an implementation of the
Gettext API. Some operating
systems have this built-in (e.g., Linux
, NetBSD
,
Solaris
), for other systems you
can download an add-on package from http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/.
If you are using the Gettext implementation in
the GNU C library then you will additionally
need the GNU Gettext™ package for some
utility programs. For any of the other implementations you will
not need it.
You need Kerberos, OpenSSL™, OpenLDAP™, and/or PAM, if you want to support authentication or encryption using those services.
To build the PostgreSQL™ documentation, there is a separate set of requirements; see the section called “Tool Sets”.
If you are building from a Git™ tree instead of using a released source package, or if you want to do server development, you also need the following packages:
GNU Flex and Bison are needed to build from a Git checkout, or if you changed the actual scanner and parser definition files. If you need them, be sure to get Flex 2.5.31 or later and Bison 1.875 or later. Other lex and yacc programs cannot be used.
Perl 5.8 or later is needed to build from a Git checkout, or if you changed the input files for any of the build steps that use Perl scripts. If building on Windows you will need Perl in any case. Perl is also required to run some test suites.
If you need to get a GNU package, you can find it at your local GNU mirror site (see http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html for a list) or at ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/.
Also check that you have sufficient disk space. You will need about 100 MB for the source tree during compilation and about 20 MB for the installation directory. An empty database cluster takes about 35 MB; databases take about five times the amount of space that a flat text file with the same data would take. If you are going to run the regression tests you will temporarily need up to an extra 150 MB. Use the df command to check free disk space.