vfox-postgres

A vfox / mise plugin for managing PostgreSQL versions.

Features

• Dynamic version fetching: Automatically fetches available versions from PostgreSQL's official FTP server
• Always up-to-date: No static version list to maintain
• Compiles from source: Uses official PostgreSQL source releases
• Includes contrib modules: Builds and installs useful extensions
• Automatic initdb: Initializes a database cluster (can be skipped)
• Cross-platform: Works on Linux and macOS

Requirements

• A C compiler (gcc or clang)
• make
• readline (libreadline-dev on Debian/Ubuntu)
• zlib (zlib1g-dev on Debian/Ubuntu)
• OpenSSL (libssl-dev on Debian/Ubuntu)

macOS

xcode-select --install
brew install openssl readline

Debian/Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install build-essential libreadline-dev zlib1g-dev libssl-dev uuid-dev

RHEL/CentOS

sudo yum groupinstall "Development Tools"
sudo yum install readline-devel zlib-devel openssl-devel uuid-devel

Installation

With mise

mise install postgres@latest
mise install [email protected]
mise install [email protected]

With vfox

vfox add postgres
vfox install postgres@latest

Usage

# List all available versions
mise ls-remote postgres

# Install a specific version
mise install [email protected]

# Set global version
mise use -g [email protected]

# Set local version (creates .mise.toml)
mise use [email protected]

Environment Variables

This plugin sets the following environment variables:

• PATH - Adds the PostgreSQL bin directory
• PGDATA - Points to the data directory ({install_path}/data)
• LD_LIBRARY_PATH - Adds PostgreSQL lib directory (Linux only)

Configuration

Skip initdb

If you don't want the plugin to run initdb automatically:

POSTGRES_SKIP_INITDB=1 mise install [email protected]

Custom configure options

Add extra configure options:

POSTGRES_EXTRA_CONFIGURE_OPTIONS="--with-python" mise install [email protected]

Or override all configure options (prefix is always added):

POSTGRES_CONFIGURE_OPTIONS="--with-openssl --with-python" mise install [email protected]

Starting PostgreSQL

After installation:

# Start the server
pg_ctl -D $PGDATA -l logfile start

# Or run in foreground
postgres -D $PGDATA

# Connect
psql -U postgres

How It Works

This plugin:

1. Fetches the list of available versions from ftp.postgresql.org
2. Downloads the source tarball for the requested version
3. Compiles PostgreSQL with ./configure && make && make install
4. Builds and installs contrib modules
5. Runs initdb to create an initial database cluster

License

MIT License - see LICENSE for details.