Extension build troubleshooting

Usually all that's necessary to build an extension is the following commands:

make
make install
make installcheck

Followed by a SQL command to create the extension in a database (replace foobar with the name of the extension):

CREATE EXTENSION foobar;

Troubleshooting

If you encounter an error such as:

"Makefile", line 8: Need an operator

You need to use GNU make, which may well be installed on your system as gmake:

gmake
gmake install
gmake installcheck

If you encounter an error such as:

make: pg_config: Command not found

Be sure that you have pg_config installed and in your path. If you used a package management system such as RPM to install PostgreSQL, be sure that the -devel package is also installed. If necessary tell the build process where to find it:

env PG_CONFIG=/path/to/pg_config make && make installcheck && make install

If you encounter an error such as:

ERROR:  must be owner of database regression

You need to run the test suite using a super user, such as the default "postgres" super user:

make installcheck PGUSER=postgres

Once the extension is installed, you can add it to a database. If you're running PostgreSQL 9.1.0 or greater, it's a simple as connecting to a database as a super user and running (replace foobar with the name of the extension):

CREATE EXTENSION foobar;

If you've upgraded your cluster to PostgreSQL 9.1 and already had the extension installed, you can upgrade it to a properly packaged extension with:

CREATE EXTENSION foobar FROM unpackaged;

For versions of PostgreSQL less than 9.1.0, you'll need to run the installation script (replace foobar with the name of the extension):

psql -d mydb -f /path/to/pgsql/share/contrib/foobar.sql

If you want to install the extension and all of its supporting objects into a specific schema, use the PGOPTIONS environment variable to specify the schema, like so:

PGOPTIONS=--search_path=extensions psql -d mydb -f foobar.sql

Credits

This troubleshooting guide was originally written by David E. Wheeler. Copied from his hostname extension README.