Re: issues/experience with building postgres on Windows

Andrew Dunstan wrote:
>
>
> Martin Zaun wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> trying to build postgres on Windows, I ran into a number of
>> problems not covered by the FAQs or the PostgreSQL 8.3.3
>> documentation:
>> http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/interactive/install-win32-full.html
>>
>> In short, it's not been an easy experience so far:
>> - build errors with latest Visual Studio Express C++ 2008
>
> Nobody ever said this was supported AFAIK. VC++ Express 2005 is the
> supported compiler so far.

All Visual C++ 2005 versions are supported, not just Express. But it's
true that 2008 is currently not supported out of the box.

>> - ok with VS Express 2005 but integration issues with Platform SDK
>
> Right.

Yeah, that's an issue with VSE. The full Visual Sudio version doesn't
have this problem.

IIRC I have built it with the 2008 SDK, but I'm not 100% sure.

As for the paths - did you just compare the PATHs in the environment or
actually run the build? Because the build runs fine even when the PATHs
in the environment are wrong, as long as they are correct in the files -
at least for me...

But. It does sound like you are on the wrong commandline. You need to
use the Visual Studio one, not the Platform SDK one.

(And yes, the Visual Studio Express integration with the Platform SDK is
really crappy. I think they've made it nicer in 2008)

>> - issues locating the 14 required software packages:
>> - no luck getting Bison 1.875 or 2.2 Windows binaries
> bison 1.875 is available here:
> http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=23617&package_id=22822

FWIW, that's the one I'm currently running.

It's all in the download page on SF, but the gnuwin32 *website* has the
wrong version up. But it's browsable. Not sure if we want to hardwire
something like that into the docs, as they might change it around on us...

Providing a pre-made package might actually be interesting, but someone
needs to maintain it... But probably not all that much work. If we get
someone to take responsibility for it (no, I'm not volunteering - I'll
be happy to help set it up, but not the maintenance part), what do
people think about the idea?

>> - linkage errors with the latest ActivePerl/TCL libraries
>
> Ugh.

Yeah, we should document the versioning there. IIRC, those versions
weren't available at the time that code was written :-)

I think for starters documentation is enough.

//Magnus