installation-from-source-code.md

PostgreSQL installation from source code

Building PostgreSQL from the source code enables you to customize build parameters, compiler optimizations, and installation location.

• Reference

Get the source

You can download the sources from the website. Then, unpack it:

$ tar xf postgresql-11.4.tar

Build and install

First, make a directory for build and configure the source tree for your system.

$ mkdir build_dir
$ ./configure --prefix=/path/to/build_dir

Then build and install the source code. (8: # of cores in your machine)

$ make -j8 install

You need to tell the system how to find the newly installed shared libraries. Set the shared library search path in ~/.bashrc:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/path/to/build_dir/lib
export PATH=/path/to/build_dir/bin:$PATH

Then, apply the modified path:

$ source ~/.bashrc

Start the database server

Before you can do anything, you must initialize a database storage area on disk. To initialize a database cluster, use the command initdb, which is installed with PostgreSQL. The desired file system location of your database cluster is indicated by the -D option:

$ initdb -D /path/to/data_dir

Then, start the server with a log file:

$ pg_ctl -D /path/to/data_dir -l logfile start

You can stop the server using below command:

$ pg_ctl -D /path/to/data_dir -m smart stop