Chapter 16. Installation from Source Code on Windows

It is recommended that most users download the binary distribution for Windows, available as a graphical installer package from the PostgreSQL™ website. Building from source is only intended for people developing PostgreSQL™ or extensions.

There are several different ways of building PostgreSQL on Windows™. The simplest way to build with Microsoft tools is to install Visual Studio Express 2013 for Windows Desktop™ and use the included compiler. It is also possible to build with the full Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 to 2013™. In some cases that requires the installation of the Windows SDK™ in addition to the compiler.

It is also possible to build PostgreSQL using the GNU compiler tools provided by MinGW™, or using Cygwin™ for older versions of Windows™.

Finally, the client access library (libpq) can be built using Visual C++ 7.1™ or Borland C++™ for compatibility with statically linked applications built using these tools.

Building using MinGW™ or Cygwin™ uses the normal build system, see Chapter 15, Installation from Source Code and the specific notes in the section called “MinGW/Native Windows” and the section called “Cygwin”. To produce native 64 bit binaries in these environments, use the tools from MinGW-w64™. These tools can also be used to cross-compile for 32 bit and 64 bit Windows™ targets on other hosts, such as Linux™ and Darwin™. Cygwin™ is not recommended for running a production server, and it should only be used for running on older versions of Windows™ where the native build does not work, such as Windows 98™. The official binaries are built using Visual Studio™.

Native builds of psql don't support command line editing. The Cygwin™ build does support command line editing, so it should be used where psql is needed for interactive use on Windows™.

PostgreSQL can be built using the Visual C++ compiler suite from Microsoft. These compilers can be either from Visual Studio™, Visual Studio Express™ or some versions of the Microsoft Windows SDK™. If you do not already have a Visual Studio™ environment set up, the easiest ways are to use the compilers from Visual Studio Express 2013 for Windows Desktop™ or those in the Windows SDK 7.1™, which are both free downloads from Microsoft.

PostgreSQL is known to support compilation using the compilers shipped with Visual Studio 2005™ to Visual Studio 2013™ (including Express editions), as well as standalone Windows SDK releases 6.0 to 7.1. 64-bit PostgreSQL builds are only supported with Microsoft Windows SDK™ version 6.0a to 7.1 or Visual Studio 2008™ and above.

The tools for building using Visual C++™ or Platform SDK™ are in the src/tools/msvc directory. When building, make sure there are no tools from MinGW™ or Cygwin™ present in your system PATH. Also, make sure you have all the required Visual C++ tools available in the PATH. In Visual Studio™, start the Visual Studio Command Prompt. If you wish to build a 64-bit version, you must use the 64-bit version of the command, and vice versa. In the Microsoft Windows SDK™, start the CMD shell listed under the SDK on the Start Menu. In recent SDK versions you can change the targeted CPU architecture, build type, and target OS by using the setenv command, e.g. setenv /x86 /release /xp to target Windows XP or later with a 32-bit release build. See /? for other options to setenv. All commands should be run from the src\tools\msvc directory.

Before you build, you may need to edit the file config.pl to reflect any configuration options you want to change, or the paths to any third party libraries to use. The complete configuration is determined by first reading and parsing the file config_default.pl, and then apply any changes from config.pl. For example, to specify the location of your Python™ installation, put the following in config.pl:

$config->{python} = 'c:\python26';

You only need to specify those parameters that are different from what's in config_default.pl.

If you need to set any other environment variables, create a file called buildenv.pl and put the required commands there. For example, to add the path for bison when it's not in the PATH, create a file containing:

$ENV{PATH}=$ENV{PATH} . ';c:\some\where\bison\bin';

The following additional products are required to build PostgreSQL™. Use the config.pl file to specify which directories the libraries are available in.

Microsoft Windows SDK

If your build environment doesn't ship with a supported version of the Microsoft Windows SDK™ it is recommended that you upgrade to the latest version (currently version 7.1), available for download from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/.

You must always include the Windows Headers and Libraries part of the SDK. If you install a Windows SDK™ including the Visual C++ Compilers, you don't need Visual Studio™ to build. Note that as of Version 8.0a the Windows SDK no longer ships with a complete command-line build environment.

ActiveState Perl

ActiveState Perl is required to run the build generation scripts. MinGW or Cygwin Perl will not work. It must also be present in the PATH. Binaries can be downloaded from http://www.activestate.com (Note: version 5.8 or later is required, the free Standard Distribution is sufficient).

The following additional products are not required to get started, but are required to build the complete package. Use the config.pl file to specify which directories the libraries are available in.

ActiveState TCL

Required for building PL/TCL (Note: version 8.4 is required, the free Standard Distribution is sufficient).

Bison™ and Flex

Bison™ and Flex™ are required to build from Git, but not required when building from a release file. Only Bison™ 1.875 or versions 2.2 and later will work. Flex™ must be version 2.5.31 or later.

Both Bison™ and Flex™ are included in the msys™ tool suite, available from http://www.mingw.org/wiki/MSYS as part of the MinGW™ compiler suite. You can also get msys™ as part of msysGit™ from http://git-scm.com/.

You will need to add the directory containing flex.exe and bison.exe to the PATH environment variable in buildenv.pl unless they are already in PATH. In the case of MinGW, the directory is the \msys\1.0\bin subdirectory of your MinGW installation directory. For msysGit, it's the bin directory in your Git install directory. Do not add the MinGW compiler tools themselves to PATH.

Note

The Bison distribution from GnuWin32 appears to have a bug that causes Bison to malfunction when installed in a directory with spaces in the name, such as the default location on English installations C:\Program Files\GnuWin32. Consider installing into C:\GnuWin32 or use the NTFS short name path to GnuWin32 in your PATH environment setting (e.g. C:\PROGRA~1\GnuWin32).

Note

The obsolete "winflex" binaries distributed on the PostgreSQL FTP site and referenced in older documentation will fail with "flex: fatal internal error, exec failed" on 64-bit Windows hosts. Use flex from msys instead.

Diff

Diff is required to run the regression tests, and can be downloaded from http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net.

Gettext

Gettext is required to build with NLS support, and can be downloaded from http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net. Note that binaries, dependencies and developer files are all needed.

MIT Kerberos

Required for GSSAPI authentication support. MIT Kerberos can be downloaded from http://web.mit.edu/Kerberos/dist/index.html.

libxml2™ and libxslt

Required for XML support. Binaries can be downloaded from http://zlatkovic.com/pub/libxml or source from http://xmlsoft.org. Note that libxml2 requires iconv, which is available from the same download location.

openssl

Required for SSL support. Binaries can be downloaded from http://www.slproweb.com/products/Win32OpenSSL.html or source from http://www.openssl.org.

ossp-uuid

Required for UUID-OSSP support (contrib only). Source can be downloaded from http://www.ossp.org/pkg/lib/uuid/.

Python

Required for building PL/Python. Binaries can be downloaded from http://www.python.org.

zlib

Required for compression support in pg_dump and pg_restore. Binaries can be downloaded from http://www.zlib.net.

Building the PostgreSQL documentation in HTML format requires several tools and files. Create a root directory for all these files, and store them in the subdirectories in the list below.

OpenJade 1.3.1-2

Download from http://sourceforge.net/projects/openjade/files/openjade/1.3.1/openjade-1_3_1-2-bin.zip/download and uncompress in the subdirectory openjade-1.3.1.

DocBook DTD 4.2

Download from http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/sgml/4.2/docbook-4.2.zip and uncompress in the subdirectory docbook.

DocBook DSSSL 1.79

Download from http://sourceforge.net/projects/docbook/files/docbook-dsssl/1.79/docbook-dsssl-1.79.zip/download and uncompress in the subdirectory docbook-dsssl-1.79.

ISO character entities

Download from http://www.oasis-open.org/cover/ISOEnts.zip and uncompress in the subdirectory docbook.

Edit the buildenv.pl file, and add a variable for the location of the root directory, for example:

$ENV{DOCROOT}='c:\docbook';

To build the documentation, run the command builddoc.bat. Note that this will actually run the build twice, in order to generate the indexes. The generated HTML files will be in doc\src\sgml.