This chapter focuses on the requirements and steps involved in installing and configuring PostgreSQL. Many of the
PostgreSQL capabilities are not enabled, by default. For example, support for the TCL language is a feature that must be
explicitly requested during compile-time. As there are many other features that are not configured by default, we will cover
the various flags and options you may use to enable them when compiling PostgreSQL. It is important that you carefully read
through all the steps in this process before beginning installation.
This chapter will walk you through the installation steps on a Linux/UNIX-style platform. Our installation platform is
Linux, but these instructions should be compatible with most current UNIX platforms.
Note: Although PostgreSQL is capable of running on a Win32 platform, this book does not cover installation on Windows. The
Win32 version of PostgreSQL requires the Cygwin environment and will not operate independently within Win32. Although Cygwin
can be useful in many situations, the use of PostgreSQL in a Cygwin environment is not recommended.
The installation of PostgreSQL is not difficult. However, there are some software requirements that you will need for
the PostgreSQL compilation. All of the requirements — outside of the PostgreSQL source code — are GNU tools. If
you are running Linux, there is a good chance that the tools are already installed. If you are running a BSD derivative,
such as FreeBSD or MacOS X, you may have to download the tools.
If you find that you are missing any of the required components, first check your vendor's web site for the packages;
otherwise, you may download them from
https://www.gnu.org
. It is also essential that you have enough
disk space available to unpack and compile the source code on the filesystem to which you install. Disk-space requirements
are discussed in the Section called Disk Space
."
