OTOH, if there were a very clear and credible page with good instructions on installing build environment + postgres (for say RHEL, Ubuntu & Fedora) that would install side by side with an existing installation (and how to remove it all cleanly) it would make me and maybe others more able/likely to test patches. There may be such a page--I just didn't find it. And I was somewhat dissuaded from building an RPM on my CentOs machine by the note in the Postgres wiki that the ubuntu packages allow "multiple versions more easily than other packaging schemes."
Just a thought. I know all the information is out there and can be pieced together. Like many computing endeavors, I'm sure the second time would be quick and easy, but likely not so much the first!
Thanks for the link. I really do appreciate all the documentation that Postgres has put together. In this case I especially like the short version provided, which covers part of what I was looking for. It would be great if there were a similar page that addressed how to set this up side-by-side with an existing installation, and had a cheat sheet for pulling in build tools and libraries. (As in, on Cent OS run "yum install x y z...", Ubunutu "apt-get install a x z".) I get that the build environment and libraries are outside of the scope of Postgres proper and maybe unfair to ask it be documented, but they're still steps people have to go through. If they were included in that short version format, it would be fantastic!