17.3. Building and Installation with Autoconf and Make

Install all files under the directory PREFIX instead of /usr/local/pgsql . The actual files will be installed into various subdirectories; no files will ever be installed directly into the PREFIX directory.

You can install architecture-dependent files under a different prefix, EXEC-PREFIX , than what PREFIX was set to. This can be useful to share architecture-independent files between hosts. If you omit this, then EXEC-PREFIX is set equal to PREFIX and both architecture-dependent and independent files will be installed under the same tree, which is probably what you want.

Specifies the directory for executable programs. The default is EXEC-PREFIX /bin , which normally means /usr/local/pgsql/bin .

Sets the directory for various configuration files, PREFIX /etc by default.

Sets the location to install libraries and dynamically loadable modules. The default is EXEC-PREFIX /lib .

Sets the directory for installing C and C++ header files. The default is PREFIX /include .

Sets the root directory for various types of read-only data files. This only sets the default for some of the following options. The default is PREFIX /share .

Sets the directory for read-only data files used by the installed programs. The default is DATAROOTDIR . Note that this has nothing to do with where your database files will be placed.

Sets the directory for installing locale data, in particular message translation catalog files. The default is DATAROOTDIR /locale .

The man pages that come with PostgreSQL will be installed under this directory, in their respective man x subdirectories. The default is DATAROOTDIR /man .

Sets the root directory for installing documentation files, except " man " pages. This only sets the default for the following options. The default value for this option is DATAROOTDIR /doc/postgresql .

The HTML-formatted documentation for PostgreSQL will be installed under this directory. The default is DATAROOTDIR .

Enables Native Language Support ( NLS ), that is, the ability to display a program's messages in a language other than English. LANGUAGES is an optional space-separated list of codes of the languages that you want supported, for example --enable-nls='de fr' . (The intersection between your list and the set of actually provided translations will be computed automatically.) If you do not specify a list, then all available translations are installed.

To use this option, you will need an implementation of the Gettext API.

Build the PL/Perl server-side language.

Build the PL/Python server-side language.

Build the PL/Tcl server-side language.

Tcl installs the file tclConfig.sh , which contains configuration information needed to build modules interfacing to Tcl. This file is normally found automatically at a well-known location, but if you want to use a different version of Tcl you can specify the directory in which to look for tclConfig.sh .

Build with support for LLVM based JIT compilation (see Chapter 30 ). This requires the LLVM library to be installed. The minimum required version of LLVM is currently 10.

llvm-config will be used to find the required compilation options. llvm-config will be searched for in your PATH . If that would not yield the desired program, use LLVM_CONFIG to specify a path to the correct llvm-config . For example

./configure ... --with-llvm LLVM_CONFIG='/path/to/llvm/bin/llvm-config'

LLVM support requires a compatible clang compiler (specified, if necessary, using the CLANG environment variable), and a working C++ compiler (specified, if necessary, using the CXX environment variable).

Build with LZ4 compression support.

Build with Zstandard compression support.

Build with support for SSL (encrypted) connections. The only LIBRARY supported is openssl . This requires the OpenSSL package to be installed. configure will check for the required header files and libraries to make sure that your OpenSSL installation is sufficient before proceeding.

Obsolete equivalent of --with-ssl=openssl .

Build with support for GSSAPI authentication. MIT Kerberos is required to be installed for GSSAPI. On many systems, the GSSAPI system (a part of the MIT Kerberos installation) is not installed in a location that is searched by default (e.g., /usr/include , /usr/lib ), so you must use the options --with-includes and --with-libraries in addition to this option. configure will check for the required header files and libraries to make sure that your GSSAPI installation is sufficient before proceeding.

Build with LDAP support for authentication and connection parameter lookup (see Section 32.18 and Section 20.10 for more information). On Unix, this requires the OpenLDAP package to be installed. On Windows, the default WinLDAP library is used. configure will check for the required header files and libraries to make sure that your OpenLDAP installation is sufficient before proceeding.

Build with PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules) support.

Build with BSD Authentication support. (The BSD Authentication framework is currently only available on OpenBSD.)

Build with support for systemd service notifications. This improves integration if the server is started under systemd but has no impact otherwise; see Section 18.3 for more information. libsystemd and the associated header files need to be installed to use this option.

Build with support for Bonjour automatic service discovery. This requires Bonjour support in your operating system. Recommended on macOS.

Build the uuid-ossp module (which provides functions to generate UUIDs), using the specified UUID library. LIBRARY must be one of:

Obsolete equivalent of --with-uuid=ossp .

Build with libxml2, enabling SQL/XML support. Libxml2 version 2.6.23 or later is required for this feature.

To detect the required compiler and linker options, PostgreSQL will query pkg-config , if that is installed and knows about libxml2. Otherwise the program xml2-config , which is installed by libxml2, will be used if it is found. Use of pkg-config is preferred, because it can deal with multi-architecture installations better.

To use a libxml2 installation that is in an unusual location, you can set pkg-config -related environment variables (see its documentation), or set the environment variable XML2_CONFIG to point to the xml2-config program belonging to the libxml2 installation, or set the variables XML2_CFLAGS and XML2_LIBS . (If pkg-config is installed, then to override its idea of where libxml2 is you must either set XML2_CONFIG or set both XML2_CFLAGS and XML2_LIBS to nonempty strings.)

Build with libxslt, enabling the xml2 module to perform XSL transformations of XML. --with-libxml must be specified as well.

Build with SElinux support, enabling the sepgsql extension.

Build without support for the ICU library, disabling the use of ICU collation features (see Section 23.2 ).

Prevents use of the Readline library (and libedit as well). This option disables command-line editing and history in psql .

Favors the use of the BSD-licensed libedit library rather than GPL-licensed Readline . This option is significant only if you have both libraries installed; the default in that case is to use Readline .

Prevents use of the Zlib library. This disables support for compressed archives in pg_dump and pg_restore .

Allow the build to succeed even if PostgreSQL has no CPU spinlock support for the platform. The lack of spinlock support will result in very poor performance; therefore, this option should only be used if the build aborts and informs you that the platform lacks spinlock support. If this option is required to build PostgreSQL on your platform, please report the problem to the PostgreSQL developers.

Disable use of CPU atomic operations. This option does nothing on platforms that lack such operations. On platforms that do have them, this will result in poor performance. This option is only useful for debugging or making performance comparisons.

DIRECTORIES is a colon-separated list of directories that will be added to the list the compiler searches for header files. If you have optional packages (such as GNU Readline ) installed in a non-standard location, you have to use this option and probably also the corresponding --with-libraries option.

Example: --with-includes=/opt/gnu/include:/usr/sup/include .

DIRECTORIES is a colon-separated list of directories to search for libraries. You will probably have to use this option (and the corresponding --with-includes option) if you have packages installed in non-standard locations.

Example: --with-libraries=/opt/gnu/lib:/usr/sup/lib .

PostgreSQL includes its own time zone database, which it requires for date and time operations. This time zone database is in fact compatible with the IANA time zone database provided by many operating systems such as FreeBSD, Linux, and Solaris, so it would be redundant to install it again. When this option is used, the system-supplied time zone database in DIRECTORY is used instead of the one included in the PostgreSQL source distribution. DIRECTORY must be specified as an absolute path. /usr/share/zoneinfo is a likely directory on some operating systems. Note that the installation routine will not detect mismatching or erroneous time zone data. If you use this option, you are advised to run the regression tests to verify that the time zone data you have pointed to works correctly with PostgreSQL .

This option is mainly aimed at binary package distributors who know their target operating system well. The main advantage of using this option is that the PostgreSQL package won't need to be upgraded whenever any of the many local daylight-saving time rules change. Another advantage is that PostgreSQL can be cross-compiled more straightforwardly if the time zone database files do not need to be built during the installation.

Append STRING to the PostgreSQL version number. You can use this, for example, to mark binaries built from unreleased Git snapshots or containing custom patches with an extra version string, such as a git describe identifier or a distribution package release number.

Do not mark PostgreSQL 's executables to indicate that they should search for shared libraries in the installation's library directory (see --libdir ). On most platforms, this marking uses an absolute path to the library directory, so that it will be unhelpful if you relocate the installation later. However, you will then need to provide some other way for the executables to find the shared libraries. Typically this requires configuring the operating system's dynamic linker to search the library directory; see Section 17.5.1 for more detail.

Set NUMBER as the default port number for server and clients. The default is 5432. The port can always be changed later on, but if you specify it here then both server and clients will have the same default compiled in, which can be very convenient. Usually the only good reason to select a non-default value is if you intend to run multiple PostgreSQL servers on the same machine.

The default name of the Kerberos service principal used by GSSAPI. postgres is the default. There's usually no reason to change this unless you are building for a Windows environment, in which case it must be set to upper case POSTGRES .

Set the segment size , in gigabytes. Large tables are divided into multiple operating-system files, each of size equal to the segment size. This avoids problems with file size limits that exist on many platforms. The default segment size, 1 gigabyte, is safe on all supported platforms. If your operating system has " largefile " support (which most do, nowadays), you can use a larger segment size. This can be helpful to reduce the number of file descriptors consumed when working with very large tables. But be careful not to select a value larger than is supported by your platform and the file systems you intend to use. Other tools you might wish to use, such as tar , could also set limits on the usable file size. It is recommended, though not absolutely required, that this value be a power of 2. Note that changing this value breaks on-disk database compatibility, meaning you cannot use pg_upgrade to upgrade to a build with a different segment size.

Set the block size , in kilobytes. This is the unit of storage and I/O within tables. The default, 8 kilobytes, is suitable for most situations; but other values may be useful in special cases. The value must be a power of 2 between 1 and 32 (kilobytes). Note that changing this value breaks on-disk database compatibility, meaning you cannot use pg_upgrade to upgrade to a build with a different block size.

Set the WAL block size , in kilobytes. This is the unit of storage and I/O within the WAL log. The default, 8 kilobytes, is suitable for most situations; but other values may be useful in special cases. The value must be a power of 2 between 1 and 64 (kilobytes). Note that changing this value breaks on-disk database compatibility, meaning you cannot use pg_upgrade to upgrade to a build with a different WAL block size.

Compiles all programs and libraries with debugging symbols. This means that you can run the programs in a debugger to analyze problems. This enlarges the size of the installed executables considerably, and on non-GCC compilers it usually also disables compiler optimization, causing slowdowns. However, having the symbols available is extremely helpful for dealing with any problems that might arise. Currently, this option is recommended for production installations only if you use GCC. But you should always have it on if you are doing development work or running a beta version.

Enables assertion checks in the server, which test for many " cannot happen " conditions. This is invaluable for code development purposes, but the tests can slow down the server significantly. Also, having the tests turned on won't necessarily enhance the stability of your server! The assertion checks are not categorized for severity, and so what might be a relatively harmless bug will still lead to server restarts if it triggers an assertion failure. This option is not recommended for production use, but you should have it on for development work or when running a beta version.

Enable tests using the Perl TAP tools. This requires a Perl installation and the Perl module IPC::Run . See Section 31.4 for more information.

Enables automatic dependency tracking. With this option, the makefiles are set up so that all affected object files will be rebuilt when any header file is changed. This is useful if you are doing development work, but is just wasted overhead if you intend only to compile once and install. At present, this option only works with GCC.

If using GCC, all programs and libraries are compiled with code coverage testing instrumentation. When run, they generate files in the build directory with code coverage metrics. See Section 31.5 for more information. This option is for use only with GCC and when doing development work.

If using GCC, all programs and libraries are compiled so they can be profiled. On backend exit, a subdirectory will be created that contains the gmon.out file containing profile data. This option is for use only with GCC and when doing development work.

Compiles PostgreSQL with support for the dynamic tracing tool DTrace. See Section 27.5 for more information.

To point to the dtrace program, the environment variable DTRACE can be set. This will often be necessary because dtrace is typically installed under /usr/sbin , which might not be in your PATH .

Extra command-line options for the dtrace program can be specified in the environment variable DTRACEFLAGS . On Solaris, to include DTrace support in a 64-bit binary, you must specify DTRACEFLAGS="-64" . For example, using the GCC compiler:

./configure CC='gcc -m64' --enable-dtrace DTRACEFLAGS='-64' ...

Using Sun's compiler:

./configure CC='/opt/SUNWspro/bin/cc -xtarget=native64' --enable-dtrace DTRACEFLAGS='-64' ...

Compiles PostgreSQL with support for injection points in the server. Injection points allow to run user-defined code from within the server in pre-defined code paths. This helps in testing and in the investigation of concurrency scenarios in a controlled fashion. This option is disabled by default. See Section 36.10.13 for more details. This option is intended to be used only by developers for testing.

Specify the relation segment size in blocks. If both --with-segsize and this option are specified, this option wins. This option is only for developers, to test segment related code.