Tooling

The src/tools/ and src/test/ directories carry a small army of helpers used by committers and contributors. This page lists the ones you'll actually run.

Code formatting

pgindent

The project's canonical formatter. Source: src/tools/pgindent/.

src/tools/pgindent/pgindent <files...>
src/tools/pgindent/pgindent --indent=/path/to/pg_bsd_indent  # custom indent binary

pgindent wraps a vendored fork of BSD indent, with a project typedef list (src/tools/pgindent/typedefs.list) so it correctly aligns project-defined types. New typedefs require an update to typedefs.list; src/tools/find_typedef extracts them from a built binary.

perltidy

Perl files (TAP tests, build helpers) are formatted by perltidy. The configuration lives at src/tools/pgindent/perltidyrc.

perltidy --profile=src/tools/pgindent/perltidyrc <files...>

Verifying clean style

src/tools/pgindent/pgindent .              # indent everything
git diff --check                            # whitespace errors

The buildfarm reports style violations; CI catches most of them.

Code generation

PostgreSQL generates a non-trivial amount of C from data files. The generators live in the source tree and are invoked by the build system; you usually don't need to run them by hand, but it helps to know they exist.

Generator	Source	Output
genbki.pl	src/backend/catalog/genbki.pl	postgres.bki, pg_proc_d.h, schemapg.h, etc. — the bootstrap data and catalog C definitions. Reads pg_*.dat.
Gen_fmgrtab.pl	src/backend/utils/Gen_fmgrtab.pl	fmgroids.h, fmgrtab.c — function manager dispatch tables.
gen_node_support.pl	src/backend/nodes/gen_node_support.pl	copyfuncs.funcs.c, equalfuncs.funcs.c, outfuncs.funcs.c, readfuncs.funcs.c — Node tree support functions, generated from annotated headers.
generate-errcodes.pl	src/backend/utils/generate-errcodes.pl	errcodes.h, plerrcodes.h, pllua_errcodes.h, etc. Reads errcodes.txt.
gen_keywordlist.pl	src/tools/gen_keywordlist.pl	Keyword tables for the parser and psql.
unicode_*.pl	src/common/unicode/	Generated Unicode tables (case mappings, normalization).

Touching pg_proc.dat or parsenodes.h triggers a regeneration on the next build.

Build systems

PostgreSQL supports two build systems in parallel.

Autoconf / GNU make

./configure [flags]
make -j$(nproc)
make install
make check

Configure flags are documented at ./configure --help. The whole build is driven by GNUmakefile.in, src/Makefile.global.in, and per-directory Makefiles.

Meson

meson setup build [-Doption=value ...]
ninja -C build
meson install -C build
meson test -C build

Per-directory meson.build files mirror the Makefiles. The top-level options live in meson_options.txt.

When adding a new C file, add it to both the Makefile (OBJS = ...) and the meson.build (backend_sources_list += ... or the equivalent). The two builds are kept in sync by hand and by CI.

MSVC

Windows builds historically used a Perl-based MSVC build system (src/tools/msvc/). The Meson build is now the recommended path on Windows; the Perl scripts are being phased out.

Test runners

Runner	Source	What it drives
pg_regress	src/test/regress/pg_regress.c	Core SQL regression tests.
pg_isolation_regress	src/test/isolation/	Concurrency tests.
prove (Perl) + PostgreSQL::Test::*	src/test/perl/	TAP tests.

make check, make installcheck, and make check-world glue them together. See Testing.

Profiling and analysis tools

The tree includes a few specialized helpers:

• src/tools/check_keywords.pl — checks that the SQL keyword list in kwlist.h matches the bison grammar.
• src/tools/find_static — finds static functions that aren't called and could be removed.
• src/tools/copyright.pl — bumps the copyright year across the tree.
• src/tools/check_bison_recursion.pl — sanity checks for stack-eating bison rules.
• src/tools/RELEASE_CHANGES and src/tools/version_stamp.pl — release engineering.
• src/tools/git_changelog — assembles the changelog from git log output.

DTrace probes

src/backend/utils/probes.d defines static DTrace probes (statement-start, statement-end, lwlock-acquire, etc.) used on Solaris, FreeBSD, and Linux (via systemtap). They are compiled in when --enable-dtrace is passed.

CI: Cirrus

The project runs CI on Cirrus CI. Configuration:

• .cirrus.yml — global config.
• .cirrus.tasks.yml — per-task definitions for Linux, FreeBSD, macOS, Windows, code style.
• .cirrus.star — Starlark glue.

The same scripts run locally if you have the cirrus CLI tool, but most contributors rely on the upstream CI to catch cross-platform issues at patch time.

The buildfarm

A separate, project-administered farm of build machines runs PostgreSQL across many platforms and configurations and reports failures back. It is not in this repository — see https://buildfarm.postgresql.org/. It is the project's safety net against platform-specific regressions; new committers learn the buildfarm's coverage quickly when their first commit breaks AIX or Solaris.