Installation from Source Code on Windows
installation
on Windows
It is recommended that most users download the binary distribution for
Windows, available as a one-click 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 a modern version of the
Microsoft Platform SDK and use use the included
compiler. It is also possible to build with the full
Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 or 2008. In some cases
that requires the installation of the Platform 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
and the specific notes in
and .
These builds cannot generate 64-bit binaries.
Cygwin is not recommended and should
only be used for older versions of Windows where
the native build does not work, such as
Windows 98. MinGW is
only recommended if you are building other modules using it. The official
binaries are built using Visual Studio.
Building with Visual C++ or the
Platform SDK
PostgreSQL can be built using the Visual C++ compiler suite from Microsoft.
These compilers can be either from Visual Studio,
Visual Studio Express or recent versions of the
Platform SDK. If you do not already have a
Visual Studio environment set up, the easiest
way us to use the compilers in the Platform SDK,
which is a free download from Microsoft.
PostgreSQL supports the compilers from
Visual Studio 2005 and
Visual Studio 2008. When using the Platform SDK
only, or when building for 64-bit Windows, only
Visual Studio 2008 is supported.
The tools for building using Visual C++,
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. In the
Platform SDK, start the
CMD shell listed under the SDK on the Start Menu.
If you wish to build a 64-bit version, you must use the 64-bit version of
the command, and vice versa.
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';
Requirements
The following additional products are required to build
PostgreSQL. Use the
config.pl file to specify which directories the libraries
are available in.
Microsoft Platform SDK
It is recommended that you upgrade to the latest available version
of the Microsoft Platform SDK, available
for download from >.
You must always include the
Windows Headers and Libraries part of the SDK.
If you install the Platform SDK
including the Visual C++ Compilers,
you don't need Visual Studio to build.
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
> (Note: version 5.8 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 CVS, but not required when
building from a release file. Note that only Bison 1.875 or versions
2.2 and later will work. Also, Flex version 2.5.31 or later is required.
Bison can be downloaded from >.
Flex can be downloaded from
>.
Diff
Diff is required to run the regression tests, and can be downloaded
from >.
Gettext
Gettext is required to build with NLS support, and can be downloaded
from >. Note that binaries,
dependencies and developer files are all needed.
MIT Kerberos
Required for Kerberos authentication support. MIT Kerberos can be
downloaded from
>.
libxml2 and
libxslt
Required for XML support. Binaries can be downloaded from
> or source from
>. Note that libxml2 requires iconv,
which is available from the same download location.
openssl
Required for SSL support. Binaries can be downloaded from
>
or source from >.
ossp-uuid
Required for UUID-OSSP support (contrib only). Source can be
downloaded from
>.
Python
Required for building PL/Python. Binaries can
be downloaded from >.
zlib
Required for compression support in pg_dump
and pg_restore. Binaries can be downloaded
from >.
Special considerations for 64-bit Windows
PostgreSQL will only build for the x64 architecture on 64-bit Windows, there
is no support for Itanium processors.
Mixing 32- and 64-bit versions in the same build tree is not supported.
The build system will automatically detect if it's running in a 32- or
64-bit environment, and build PostgreSQL accordingly. For this reason, it
is important to start the correct command prompt before building.
To use a server-side third party library such as python> or
openssl>, this library must also be
64-bit. There is no support for loading a 32-bit library in a 64-bit
server. Several of the third party libraries that PostgreSQL supports may
only be available in 32-bit versions, in which case they cannot be used with
64-bit PostgreSQL.
Building
To build all of PostgreSQL in release configuration (the default), run the
command:
build
To build all of PostgreSQL in debug configuration, run the command:
build DEBUG
To build just a single project, for example psql, run the commands:
build psql
build DEBUG psql
To change the default build configuration to debug, put the following
in the buildenv.pl file:
$ENV{CONFIG}="Debug";
It is also possible to build from inside the Visual Studio GUI. In this
case, you need to run:
perl mkvcbuild.pl
from the command prompt, and then open the generated
pgsql.sln (in the root directory of the source tree)
in Visual Studio.
Cleaning and installing
Most of the time, the automatic dependency tracking in Visual Studio will
handle changed files. But if there have been large changes, you may need
to clean the installation. To do this, simply run the
clean.bat command, which will automatically clean out
all generated files. You can also run it with the
dist parameter, in which case it will behave like
make distclean and remove the flex/bison output files
as well.
By default, all files are written into a subdirectory of the
debug or release directories. To
install these files using the standard layout, and also generate the files
required to initialize and use the database, run the command:
install c:\destination\directory
Running the regression tests
To run the regression tests, make sure you have completed the build of all
required parts first. Also, make sure that the DLLs required to load all
parts of the system (such as the Perl and Python DLLs for the procedural
languages) are present in the system path. If they are not, set it through
the buildenv.pl file. To run the tests, run one of
the following commands from the src\tools\msvc
directory:
vcregress check
vcregress installcheck
vcregress plcheck
vcregress contribcheck
To change the schedule used (default is parallel), append it to the
command line like:
vcregress check serial
For more information about the regression tests, see
.
Building the documentation
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
>
and uncompress in the subdirectory openjade-1.3.1.
DocBook DTD 4.2
Download from
>
and uncompress in the subdirectory docbook.
DocBook DSSSL 1.79
Download from
>
and uncompress in the subdirectory
docbook-dsssl-1.79.
ISO character entities
Download from
> 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.
Building libpq with
Visual C++ or
Borland C++
Using Visual C++ 7.1-9.0 or
Borland C++ to build libpq is only recommended
if you need a version with different debug/release flags, or if you need a
static library to link into an application. For normal use the
MinGW or
Visual Studio or
Platform SDK method is recommended.
To build the libpq client library using
Visual Studio 7.1 or later, change into the
src directory and type the command:
nmake /f win32.mak
To build a 64-bit version of the libpq
client library using Visual Studio 8.0 or
later, change into the src
directory and type in the command:
nmake /f win32.mak CPU=AMD64
See the win32.mak file for further details
about supported variables.
To build the libpq client library using
Borland C++, change into the
src directory and type the command:
make -N -DCFG=Release /f bcc32.mak
Generated files
The following files will be built:
interfaces\libpq\Release\libpq.dll
The dynamically linkable frontend library
interfaces\libpq\Release\libpqdll.lib
Import library to link your programs to libpq.dll
interfaces\libpq\Release\libpq.lib
Static version of the frontend library
Normally you do not need to install any of the client files. You should
place the libpq.dll file in the same directory
as your applications executable file. Do not install
libpq.dll into your Windows>,
System> or System32> directory unless
absolutely necessary.
If this file is installed using a setup program, then it should
be installed with version checking using the
VERSIONINFO resource included in the file, to
ensure that a newer version of the library is not overwritten.
If you are planning to do development using libpq
on this machine, you will have to add the
src\include and
src\interfaces\libpq subdirectories of the source
tree to the include path in your compiler's settings.
To use the library, you must add the
libpqdll.lib file to your project. (In Visual
C++, just right-click on the project and choose to add it.)