Thread: simple question regarding the building of psql

I really like the feature of psql that allows you to press "up" to go to
your command history, and press "home" to go to the beginning, etc (like
a normal shell). However, I use debian linux. I have correctly compiled
pg on a mandrake box before (so that it has the more effective version
of psql), but never on debian. I thought it had something to do with
curses or ncurses, but after './configure'ing it didn't put the
libraries I have in any of the Makefiles (I have the libraries in
/usr/lib, .so and .a). I am using 7.1beta6 (although the same thing
seemed to happen since I have been using pg on debian).

Thanks for any help,
   Jeff Davis

Jeff Davis writes:

> I really like the feature of psql that allows you to press "up" to go to
> your command history, and press "home" to go to the beginning, etc (like
> a normal shell). However, I use debian linux. I have correctly compiled
> pg on a mandrake box before (so that it has the more effective version
> of psql), but never on debian. I thought it had something to do with
> curses or ncurses, but after './configure'ing it didn't put the
> libraries I have in any of the Makefiles (I have the libraries in
> /usr/lib, .so and .a). I am using 7.1beta6 (although the same thing
> seemed to happen since I have been using pg on debian).

Install GNU readline, including the header files.

--
Peter Eisentraut      peter_e@gmx.net       http://yi.org/peter-e/

Jeff Davis <jdavis@genesiswd.com> writes:
> I really like the feature of psql that allows you to press "up" to go to
> your command history, and press "home" to go to the beginning, etc (like
> a normal shell).

That's the GNU readline and history libraries.  Make sure you have those
installed (headers too --- you may need a 'devel' RPM) then re-run
configure and rebuild psql.  (You needn't rebuild everything, just
src/bin/psql/.)  Make sure configure shows that it's found libreadline
and readline.h.

            regards, tom lane