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 described in Section 16.6 below.
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 sometimes installed under
the name gmake.) To test for GNU
make enter:
make --version
You need an ISO/ANSI C compiler (at least C99-compliant). Recent versions of GCC are recommended, 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.
The minimum required version is Perl 5.8.3.
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. configure will fail
if building PL/Perl is selected but it cannot
find a shared libperl. In that case, 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.
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).
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 2.6. Python 3 is supported if it's version 3.1 or later; but see Section 45.1 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 built from source, but a
shared library is available in many operating system
distributions. configure will fail if
building PL/Python is selected but it cannot
find a shared libpython. That might mean that you
either have to install additional packages or rebuild (part of) your
Python installation to provide this shared
library. When building from source, run Python's
configure with the --enable-shared flag.
To build the PL/Tcl procedural language, you of course need a Tcl installation. The minimum required version is Tcl 8.4.
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 OpenSSL, if you want to support
encrypted client connections. OpenSSL is
also required for random number generation on platforms that do not
have /dev/urandom (except Windows). The minimum
version required is 1.0.1.
You need Kerberos, OpenLDAP, and/or PAM, if you want to support authentication using those services.
To build the PostgreSQL documentation, there is a separate set of requirements; see Section J.2.
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:
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 5.8.3 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. Perl is also required to run some test suites.
If you need to get a GNU package, you can find it at your local GNU mirror site (see https://www.gnu.org/prep/ftp for a list) or at ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/.
Also check that you have sufficient disk space. You will need about
350 MB for the source tree during compilation and about 60 MB for
the installation directory. An empty database cluster takes about
40 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
300 MB. Use the df command to check free disk
space.