Originally from: tweet, LinkedIn post.

How to compile Postgres on Ubuntu 22.04

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This post describes how to quickly compile Postgres on Ubuntu 22.04.

The official docs. It is very detailed, and it's great to be used as a reference, but you won't find a concrete list of steps for a particular OS version, e.g., Ubuntu.

This howto is enough to build Postgres from the master branch and start using it. Extend this basic set of steps if needed.

A couple of more notes:

The current (as of 2023, PG16) docs mention a new approach to building Postgres – Meson – but it is still considered experimental, we won't use it here.
The paths for binaries and PGDATA that we use here are provided just as examples (suitable for a "quick-n-dirty" setup to test, for example, a new patch from the pgsql-hackers mailing list).

Install required software
Get source code
Configure
Compile and install
Create a cluster and start using it

1) Install required software

sudo apt update

sudo apt install -y \
  build-essential libreadline-dev \
  zlib1g-dev flex bison libxml2-dev \
  libxslt-dev libssl-dev libxml2-utils \
  xsltproc ccache

2) Get source code

git clone https://gitlab.com/postgres/postgres.git
cd ./postgres

3) Configure

mkdir ~/pg16 # consider changing it!

./configure \
  --prefix=$(echo ~/pg16) \
  --with-ssl=openssl \
  --with-python \
  --enable-depend \
  --enable-cassert

(Review the list of options.)

4) Compile and install

make -j$(grep -c processor /proc/cpuinfo)
make install

5) Create a cluster and start using it

~/pg16/bin/initdb \
  -D ~/pgdata \
  --data-checksums \
  --locale-provider=icu \
  --icu-locale=en

~/pg16/bin/pg_ctl \
  -D ~/pgdata \
  -l pg.log start

Now, check:

$ ~/pg16/bin/psql postgres -c 'show server_version'
 server_version
----------------
 17devel
(1 row)