PostgreSQL can be built using Cygwin, a Linux-like environment for Windows, but that method is inferior to the native Windows build and running a server under Cygwin is no longer recommended.

When building from source, proceed according to the Unix-style installation procedure (i.e., ./configure; make; etc.), noting the following Cygwin-specific differences:

It is possible to install cygserver and the PostgreSQL server as Windows NT services. For information on how to do this, please refer to the README document included with the PostgreSQL binary package on Cygwin. It is installed in the directory /usr/share/doc/Cygwin.

To build PostgreSQL from source on macOS, you will need to install Apple's command line developer tools, which can be done by issuing

xcode-select --install

(note that this will pop up a GUI dialog window for confirmation). You may or may not wish to also install Xcode.

On recent macOS releases, it's necessary to embed the “sysroot” path in the include switches used to find some system header files. This results in the outputs of the configure script varying depending on which SDK version was used during configure. That shouldn't pose any problem in simple scenarios, but if you are trying to do something like building an extension on a different machine than the server code was built on, you may need to force use of a different sysroot path. To do that, set PG_SYSROOT, for example

make PG_SYSROOT=/desired/path all

To find out the appropriate path on your machine, run

xcrun --show-sdk-path

Note that building an extension using a different sysroot version than was used to build the core server is not really recommended; in the worst case it could result in hard-to-debug ABI inconsistencies.

You can also select a non-default sysroot path when configuring, by specifying PG_SYSROOT to configure:

./configure ... PG_SYSROOT=/desired/path

This would primarily be useful to cross-compile for some other macOS version. There is no guarantee that the resulting executables will run on the current host.

To suppress the -isysroot options altogether, use

./configure ... PG_SYSROOT=none

(any nonexistent pathname will work). This might be useful if you wish to build with a non-Apple compiler, but beware that that case is not tested or supported by the PostgreSQL developers.

macOS's “System Integrity Protection” (SIP) feature breaks make check, because it prevents passing the needed setting of DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH down to the executables being tested. You can work around that by doing make install before make check. Most PostgreSQL developers just turn off SIP, though.

PostgreSQL for Windows can be built using MinGW, a Unix-like build environment for Microsoft operating systems. The MinGW build procedure uses the normal build system described in this chapter.

MinGW, the Unix-like build tools, and MSYS, a collection of Unix tools required to run shell scripts like configure, can be downloaded from http://www.mingw.org/. Neither is required to run the resulting binaries; they are needed only for creating the binaries.

To build 64 bit binaries using MinGW, install the 64 bit tool set from https://mingw-w64.org/, put its bin directory in the PATH, and run configure with the --host=x86_64-w64-mingw32 option.

After you have everything installed, it is suggested that you run psql under CMD.EXE, as the MSYS console has buffering issues.

PostgreSQL is well-supported on Solaris. The more up to date your operating system, the fewer issues you will experience.

configure ... LDFLAGS="-R /usr/sfw/lib:/opt/sfw/lib:/usr/local/lib"

Undefined                       first referenced
 symbol                             in file
AbortTransaction                    utils/probes.o
CommitTransaction                   utils/probes.o
ld: fatal: Symbol referencing errors. No output written to postgres
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make: *** [postgres] Error 1

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.

PostgreSQL for Windows with Visual Studio can be built using Meson, as described in Section 17.4. The native Windows port requires a 32 or 64-bit version of Windows 10 or later.

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.

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 2015 to Visual Studio 2022, as well as standalone Windows SDK releases 10 and above. 64-bit PostgreSQL builds are supported with Microsoft Windows SDK version 10 and above or Visual Studio 2015 and above.

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.