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 Section 15.6
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 often installed under
the name gmake; this document will always
refer to it by that name. (On some systems
GNU make is the default tool with the name
make.) To test for GNU
make enter:
gmake --version
You need an ISO/ANSI C compiler (at least
C89-compliant). Recent
versions of GCC are recommendable, 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
2.2. Python 3 is supported if it's
version 3.1 or later; but see
Section 42.1
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.
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.
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.