Installation from Source Code on Windows {#install-windows}
========================================

installation

on Windows

It is recommended that most users download the binary distribution for
Windows, available as a graphical installer package from the PostgreSQL
website at [](https://www.postgresql.org/download/). Building from
source is only intended for people developing PostgreSQL or extensions.

There are several different ways of building PostgreSQL on Windows. The
simplest way to build with Microsoft tools is to install Visual Studio
2022 and use the included compiler. It is also possible to build with
the full Microsoft Visual C++ 2013 to 2022. In some cases that requires
the installation of the Windows SDK in addition to the compiler.

It is also possible to build PostgreSQL using the GNU compiler tools
provided by MinGW, or using Cygwin for older versions of Windows.

Building using MinGW or Cygwin uses the normal build system, see
[???](#installation) and the specific notes in
[???](#installation-notes-mingw) and [???](#installation-notes-cygwin).
To produce native 64 bit binaries in these environments, use the tools
from MinGW-w64. These tools can also be used to cross-compile for 32 bit
and 64 bit Windows targets on other hosts, such as Linux and macOS.
Cygwin is not recommended for running a production server, and it should
only be used for running on older versions of Windows where the native
build does not work. The official binaries are built using Visual
Studio.

Native builds of psql don\'t support command line editing. The Cygwin
build does support command line editing, so it should be used where psql
is needed for interactive use on Windows.

Building with Visual C++ or the Microsoft Windows SDK {#install-windows-full}
=====================================================

PostgreSQL can be built using the Visual C++ compiler suite from
Microsoft. These compilers can be either from Visual Studio, Visual
Studio Express or some versions of the Microsoft Windows SDK. If you do
not already have a Visual Studio environment set up, the easiest ways
are to use the compilers from Visual Studio 2022 or those in the Windows
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 with Visual Studio 2013 to
Visual Studio 2022, as well as standalone Windows SDK releases 8.1a to
10. 64-bit PostgreSQL builds are supported with Microsoft Windows SDK
version 8.1a to 10 or Visual Studio 2013 and above. Compilation is
supported down to Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 when building
with Visual Studio 2013 to Visual Studio 2022.

The tools for building using Visual C++ or Platform SDK are in the
`src\tools\msvc` directory. When building, make sure there are no tools
from MinGW or Cygwin present in your system PATH. Also, make sure you
have all the required Visual C++ tools available in the PATH. In Visual
Studio, start the Visual 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 with Visual Studio 2017 this can be done from the
command line using `VsDevCmd.bat`, see `-help` for the available options
and their default values. `vsvars32.bat` is available in Visual Studio
2015 and earlier versions for the same purpose. From the Visual Studio
Command Prompt, you can change the targeted CPU architecture, build
type, and target OS by using the `vcvarsall.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 of `vcvarsall.bat`. All
commands should be run from the `src\tools\msvc` directory.

Before you build, you may need to edit the file `config.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 file `config_default.pl`, and then apply
any changes from `config.pl`. For example, to specify the location of
your Python installation, put the following in `config.pl`:

    $config->{python} = 'c:\python310';

You only need to specify those parameters that are different from
what\'s in `config_default.pl`.

If you need to set any other environment variables, create a file called
`buildenv.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";

Requirements
------------

The following additional products are required to build PostgreSQL. Use
the `config.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
    the Microsoft Windows SDK it is recommended that you upgrade to the
    latest version (currently version 10), available for download from
    [](https://www.microsoft.com/download).

    You must always include the Windows Headers and Libraries part of
    the SDK. If you install a Windows SDK including the Visual C++
    Compilers, you don\'t need Visual 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 from
    [](https://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 the `config.pl` file to
specify which directories the libraries are available in.

ActiveState TCL

:   Required for building PL/Tcl (Note: version 8.4 is required, the
    free Standard Distribution is sufficient).

Bison and Flex

:   Bison and Flex are required to build from Git, but not required when
    building from a release file. Only Bison 1.875 or versions 2.2 and
    later will work. Flex must be version 2.5.31 or later.

    Both Bison and Flex are included in the msys tool suite, available
    from [](http://www.mingw.org/wiki/MSYS) as part of the MinGW
    compiler suite.

    You will need to add the directory containing `flex.exe` and
    `bison.exe` to the PATH environment variable in `buildenv.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
    > into `C:\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
    from [](http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net).

Gettext

:   Gettext is required to build with NLS support, and can be downloaded
    from [](http://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 from [](https://web.mit.edu/Kerberos/dist/index.html).

libxml2 and libxslt

:   Required for XML support. Binaries can be downloaded from
    [](https://zlatkovic.com/pub/libxml) or source from
    [](http://xmlsoft.org). Note that libxml2 requires iconv, which is
    available from the same download location.

LZ4

:   Required for supporting LZ4 compression. Binaries and source can be
    downloaded from [](https://github.com/lz4/lz4/releases).

ZSTD

:   Required for supporting ZSTD compression method. Binaries and source
    can be downloaded from
    [](https://github.com/facebook/zstd/releases).

OpenSSL

:   Required for SSL support. Binaries can be downloaded from
    [](https://slproweb.com/products/Win32OpenSSL.html) or source from
    [](https://www.openssl.org).

ossp-uuid

:   Required for UUID-OSSP support (contrib only). Source can be
    downloaded from [](http://www.ossp.org/pkg/lib/uuid/).

Python

:   Required for building PL/Python. Binaries can be downloaded from
    [](https://www.python.org).

zlib

:   Required for compression support in pg\_dump and pg\_restore.
    Binaries can be downloaded from [](https://www.zlib.net).

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 as python or OpenSSL, this
library *must* 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.

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
the `buildenv.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 generated `pgsql.sln` (in the
root directory of the source tree) in Visual Studio.

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 the `clean.bat`
command, which will automatically clean out all generated files. You can
also run it with the `dist` parameter, in which case it will behave like
`make distclean` and remove the flex/bison output files as well.

By default, all files are written into a subdirectory of the `debug` or
`release` 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

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 the `buildenv.pl` file. To run the tests, run one of the
following commands from the `src\tools\msvc` directory:

    vcregress check
    vcregress installcheck
    vcregress plcheck
    vcregress contribcheck
    vcregress modulescheck
    vcregress ecpgcheck
    vcregress isolationcheck
    vcregress bincheck
    vcregress recoverycheck

To change the schedule used (default is parallel), append it to the
command line like:

    vcregress check serial

For more information about the regression tests, see [???](#regress).

Running the regression tests on client programs, with
`vcregress bincheck`, or on recovery tests, with
`vcregress recoverycheck`, 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 the `IPC-Run-<version>.tar.gz` source
    archive from CPAN, at [](https://metacpan.org/release/IPC-Run), and
    uncompress. Edit the `buildenv.pl` file, and add a PERL5LIB variable
    to point to the `lib` subdirectory from the extracted archive. For
    example:

        $ENV{PERL5LIB}=$ENV{PERL5LIB} . ';c:\IPC-Run-0.94\lib';

The TAP tests run with `vcregress` support the environment variables
`PROVE_TESTS`, that is expanded automatically using the name patterns
given, and `PROVE_FLAGS`. These can be set on a Windows terminal, before
running `vcregress`:

    set PROVE_FLAGS=--timer --jobs 2
    set PROVE_TESTS=t/020*.pl t/010*.pl

It is also possible to set up those parameters in `buildenv.pl`:

    $ENV{PROVE_FLAGS}='--timer --jobs 2'
    $ENV{PROVE_TESTS}='t/020*.pl t/010*.pl'

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 in `buildenv.pl`:

`GZIP_PROGRAM`

:   Path to a gzip command. The default is `gzip`, which will search for
    a command by that name in the configured PATH.

`LZ4`

:   Path to a lz4 command. The default is `lz4`, which will search for a
    command by that name in the configured PATH.

`TAR`

:   Path to a tar command. The default is `tar`, which will search for a
    command by that name in the configured PATH.

`ZSTD`

:   Path to a zstd command. The default is `zstd`, which will search for
    a command by that name in the configured PATH.
