Practical PostgreSQL

10 Steps to Installing PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL is included on the CD distributed with this book, but you may want to visit the PostgreSQL website to see if there is a newer version available. Many FTP sites make the source files for PostgreSQL available for download; a complete list of FTP mirrors can be found at http://www.postgresql.org.

Once you have connected to a PostgreSQL FTP mirror, you will see the stable releases located within a directory beginning with v followed by a version (such as v7.1.3/). There should also be a symbolic link to the most recent stable release’s directory called latest/.

Within this sub-directory is a list of package files. The complete PostgreSQL installation package is named postgresql-[version].tar.gz and should be the largest file in the list. The following sub-packages are also made available for download, and may be installed in any combination (though at least base is required):

postgresql-base-[version].tar.gz

The base package contains the bare minimum of source code required to build and run PostgreSQL.

postgresql-docs-[version].tar.gz

The docs package contains the PostgreSQL documentation in HTML format. Note that the PostgreSQL man pages are automatically installed with the base package.

postgresql-opt-[version].tar.gz

The opt package contains several optional extensions to PostgreSQL, such as the interfaces for C++ (libpq++), JDBC, ODBC, Perl, Python, and Tcl. It also contains the source required for multibyte support.

postgresql-test-[version].tar.gz ...