| 17.1. Building withVisual C++ or theMicrosoft Windows SDK | ||||
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17.1. Building withVisual C++ or theMicrosoft Windows SDK
PostgreSQL can be built using the Visual C++ compiler suite from Microsoft. These compilers can be either fromVisual Studio,Visual Studio Express or some versions of theMicrosoft Windows SDK. If you do not already have aVisual Studio environment set up, the easiest ways are to use the compilers fromVisual Studio 2022 or those in theWindows SDK 10, which are both free downloads from Microsoft.
Both 32-bit and 64-bit builds are possible with the Microsoft Compiler suite. 32-bit PostgreSQL builds are possible withVisual Studio 2005 toVisual Studio 2022, as well as standalone Windows SDK releases 6.0 to 10. 64-bit PostgreSQL builds are supported withMicrosoft Windows SDK version 6.0a to 10 orVisual Studio 2008 and above. Compilation is supported down toWindows XP andWindows Server 2003 when building withVisual Studio 2005 toVisual Studio 2013. Building withVisual Studio 2015 is supported down toWindows Vista andWindows Server 2008. Building withVisual Studio 2017 toVisual Studio 2022 is supported down toWindows 7 SP1 andWindows Server 2008 R2 SP1.
The tools for building usingVisual C++ orPlatform SDK are in thesrc/tools/msvc directory. When building, make sure there are no tools fromMinGW orCygwin present in your system PATH. Also, make sure you have all the required Visual C++ tools available in the PATH. InVisual Studio, start theVisual 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 theMicrosoft Windows SDK, start theCMD 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 thesetenv command, e.g.,setenv /x86 /release /xp to target Windows XP or later with a 32-bit release build. See/? for other options tosetenv. All commands should be run from thesrc\tools\msvc directory.
Before you build, you can create the fileconfig.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 fileconfig_default.pl, and then apply any changes fromconfig.pl. For example, to specify the location of yourPython installation, put the following inconfig.pl:
$config->{python} = 'c:\python26'; You only need to specify those parameters that are different from what's inconfig_default.pl.
If you need to set any other environment variables, create a file calledbuildenv.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';To pass additional command line arguments to the Visual Studio build command (msbuild or vcbuild):
$ENV{MSBFLAGS}="/m";17.1.1. Requirements
The following additional products are required to buildPostgreSQL. Use theconfig.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 theMicrosoft Windows SDK it is recommended that you upgrade to the latest version (currently version 10), available for download fromhttps://www.microsoft.com/download.
You must always include theWindows Headers and Libraries part of the SDK. If you install aWindows SDK including theVisual C++ Compilers, you don't needVisual 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 fromhttps://www.activestate.com (Note: version 5.8.3 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 theconfig.pl file to specify which directories the libraries are available in.
- ActiveState TCL
Required for buildingPL/Tcl (Note: version 8.4 is required, the free Standard Distribution is sufficient).
- Bison andFlex
Bison andFlex are required to build from Git, but not required when building from a release file. OnlyBison 1.875 or versions 2.2 and later will work.Flex must be version 2.5.31 or later.
BothBison andFlex are included in themsys tool suite, available fromhttp://www.mingw.org/wiki/MSYS as part of theMinGW compiler suite.
You will need to add the directory containing
flex.exeandbison.exeto the PATH environment variable inbuildenv.plunless they are already in PATH. In the case of MinGW, the directory is the\msys\1.0\binsubdirectory of your MinGW installation directory.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 intoC:\GnuWin32or use the NTFS short name path to GnuWin32 in your PATH environment setting (e.g.,C:\PROGRA~1\GnuWin32).Note
The obsolete
winflexbinaries 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 fromhttp://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net.
- Gettext
Gettext is required to build with NLS support, and can be downloaded fromhttp://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 fromhttps://web.mit.edu/Kerberos/dist/index.html.
- libxml2 andlibxslt
Required for XML support. Binaries can be downloaded fromhttps://zlatkovic.com/pub/libxml or source fromhttp://xmlsoft.org. Note that libxml2 requires iconv, which is available from the same download location.
- OpenSSL
Required for SSL support. Binaries can be downloaded fromhttps://slproweb.com/products/Win32OpenSSL.html or source fromhttps://www.openssl.org.
- ossp-uuid
Required for UUID-OSSP support (contrib only). Source can be downloaded fromhttp://www.ossp.org/pkg/lib/uuid/.
- Python
Required for buildingPL/Python. Binaries can be downloaded fromhttps://www.python.org.
- zlib
Required for compression support inpg_dump andpg_restore. Binaries can be downloaded fromhttps://www.zlib.net.
17.1.2. 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 aspython orOpenSSL, this librarymust 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.
17.1.3. Building
To build all of PostgreSQL in release configuration (the default), run the command:
buildTo build all of PostgreSQL in debug configuration, run the command:
build DEBUGTo build just a single project, for example psql, run the commands:
build psqlbuild DEBUG psql
To change the default build configuration to debug, put the following in thebuildenv.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 generatedpgsql.sln (in the root directory of the source tree) in Visual Studio.
17.1.4. 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 theclean.bat command, which will automatically clean out all generated files. You can also run it with thedist parameter, in which case it will behave likemake distclean and remove the flex/bison output files as well.
By default, all files are written into a subdirectory of thedebug orrelease 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\directoryIf you want to install only the client applications and interface libraries, then you can use these commands:
install c:\destination\directory client17.1.5. 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 thebuildenv.pl file. To run the tests, run one of the following commands from thesrc\tools\msvc directory:
vcregress checkvcregress installcheckvcregress plcheckvcregress contribcheckvcregress modulescheckvcregress ecpgcheckvcregress isolationcheckvcregress bincheckvcregress recoverycheckvcregress taptestvcregress upgradecheck
To change the schedule used (default is parallel), append it to the command line like:
vcregress check serialvcregress taptest can be used to run the TAP tests of a target directory, like:
vcregress taptest src\bin\initdb\For more information about the regression tests, seeChapter 33.
Running the regression tests on client programs withvcregress bincheck, on recovery tests withvcregress recoverycheck, or TAP tests specified withvcregress taptest requires an additional Perl module to be installed:
- IPC::Run
As of this writing,
IPC::Runis not included in the ActiveState Perl installation, nor in the ActiveState Perl Package Manager (PPM) library. To install, download theIPC-Run-<version>.tar.gzsource archive from CPAN, athttps://metacpan.org/release/IPC-Run, and uncompress. Edit thebuildenv.plfile, and add a PERL5LIB variable to point to thelibsubdirectory from the extracted archive. For example:$ENV{PERL5LIB}=$ENV{PERL5LIB} . ';c:\IPC-Run-0.94\lib';
Some of the TAP tests depend on a set of external commands that would optionally trigger tests related to them. Each one of those variables can be set or unset inbuildenv.pl:
GZIP_PROGRAMPath to agzip command. The default is
gzip, that would be the command found inPATH.TARPath to atar command. The default is
tar, that would be the command found inPATH.
17.1.6. 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 fromhttps://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 fromhttps://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/sgml/4.2/docbook-4.2.zip and uncompress in the subdirectory
docbook.- ISO character entities
Download fromhttps://www.oasis-open.org/cover/ISOEnts.zip and uncompress in the subdirectory
docbook.
Edit thebuildenv.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 commandbuilddoc.bat. Note that this will actually run the build twice, in order to generate the indexes. The generated HTML files will be indoc\src\sgml.