18.1. Building withVisual C++ or theMicrosoft Windows SDK | ||||
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18.1. 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 2015 toVisual Studio 2022, as well as standalone Windows SDK releases 10 and above. 64-bit PostgreSQL builds are supported withMicrosoft Windows SDK version 10 and above orVisual Studio 2015 and above.
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. Starting withVisual Studio 2017 this can be done from the command line usingVsDevCmd.bat
, see-help
for the available options and their default values.vsvars32.bat
is available inVisual Studio 2015 and earlier versions for the same purpose. From theVisual Studio Command Prompt, you can change the targeted CPU architecture, build type, and target OS by using thevcvarsall.bat
command, e.g.,vcvarsall.bat x64 10.0.10240.0
to target Windows 10 with a 64-bit release build. See-help
for the other options ofvcvarsall.bat
. 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:\python310';
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";
18.1.1. 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.
- Strawberry Perl
Strawberry 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://strawberryperl.com.
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.
- Magicsplat Tcl
Required for buildingPL/Tcl. Binaries can be downloaded fromhttps://www.magicsplat.com/tcl-installer/index.html.
- Bison andFlex
Bison andFlex are required to build from Git, but not required when building from a release file. OnlyBison versions 2.3 and later will work.Flex must be version 2.5.35 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.exe
andbison.exe
to the PATH environment variable inbuildenv.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.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:\GnuWin32
or use the NTFS short name path to GnuWin32 in your PATH environment setting (e.g.,C:\PROGRA~1\GnuWin32
).- 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.
- LZ4
Required for supportingLZ4 compression. Binaries and source can be downloaded fromhttps://github.com/lz4/lz4/releases.
- Zstandard
Required for supportingZstandard compression. Binaries and source can be downloaded fromhttps://github.com/facebook/zstd/releases.
- 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.
18.1.2. Special Considerations for 64-Bit Windows#
PostgreSQL will only build for the x64 architecture on 64-bit Windows.
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.
18.1.3. 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 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.
18.1.4. 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\directory
If you want to install only the client applications and interface libraries, then you can use these commands:
install c:\destination\directory client
18.1.5. 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 check
vcregress installcheck
vcregress plcheck
vcregress contribcheck
vcregress modulescheck
vcregress ecpgcheck
vcregress isolationcheck
vcregress bincheck
vcregress recoverycheck
vcregress taptest
To change the schedule used (default is parallel), append it to the command line like:
vcregress check serial
vcregress 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::Run
is not included in the ActiveState Perl installation, nor in the ActiveState Perl Package Manager (PPM) library. To install, download theIPC-Run-<version>.tar.gz
source archive fromCPAN, athttps://metacpan.org/dist/IPC-Run, and uncompress. Edit thebuildenv.pl
file, and add a PERL5LIB variable to point to thelib
subdirectory from the extracted archive. For example:$ENV{PERL5LIB}=$ENV{PERL5LIB} . ';c:\IPC-Run-0.94\lib';
The TAP tests run withvcregress
support the environment variablesPROVE_TESTS
, that is expanded automatically using the name patterns given, andPROVE_FLAGS
. These can be set on a Windows terminal, before runningvcregress
:
set PROVE_FLAGS=--timer --jobs 2set PROVE_TESTS=t/020*.pl t/010*.pl
It is also possible to set up those parameters inbuildenv.pl
:
$ENV{PROVE_FLAGS}='--timer --jobs 2'$ENV{PROVE_TESTS}='t/020*.pl t/010*.pl'
Additionally, the behavior of TAP tests can be controlled by a set of environment variables, seeSection 33.4.1.
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_PROGRAM
Path to agzip command. The default is
gzip
, which will search for a command by that name in the configuredPATH
.LZ4
Path to alz4 command. The default is
lz4
, which will search for a command by that name in the configuredPATH
.OPENSSL
Path to anopenssl command. The default is
openssl
, which will search for a command by that name in the configuredPATH
.TAR
Path to atar command. The default is
tar
, which will search for a command by that name in the configuredPATH
.ZSTD
Path to azstd command. The default is
zstd
, which will search for a command by that name in the configuredPATH
.