Re: Beginner question: Hacking environment?

Adrian von Bidder <avbidder@fortytwo.ch> writes:
> Thanks for all your answers. I was just a bit confused because when I write 
> stuff for myself I usually set up stuff to run directly in the build 
> environment, so I was expecting something like that to be available.  But 
> make install into ~/pg will do fine as well. (I want to avoid having my 
> trashed version version be available systemwide...)

No, nobody installs test versions into "real" locations.  What you want
is to set an install spot with configure --prefix.  For instance, I
usually doconfigure --prefix=/home/tgl/testversion --enable-debug --enable-cassert
Be sure to add $PREFIX/bin to your PATH so that you can call the
test-installation programs conveniently.

It's also often a good idea to specify a non-default port number using
--with-pgport so that you can run your test postmaster concurrently with
a regular one.

Lastly, setting PGDATA in your environment to a suitable test database
location will save typing and avoid mistakes.

As Peter mentioned, most of us have scripts to set up a preferred
working environment of this sort.  I think I've published mine at least
once ... check the archives.
        regards, tom lane