Magnus Hagander's PostgreSQL blog

PostgreSQL documentation is in DocBook format. In my experience, this is far from trivial to get working on any platform where it isn't installed by the default packages - and even worse if it's installed by default but in the wrong version.

Turns out on Windows it's both better and worse - it's definitly harder than a pre-installed system, but a lot easier than one with the wrong version installed. Here are some step-by-step instructions for how to do it in a way that uses only pre-made binary packages of the required tools. It's a manual build not integrated with the pg Makefile, but it's a start...

First of all, decide on a root for the docbook installation. In my case, I chose f:\docbook. Download and uncompress the following files:

• ActiveState Perl, installed anywhere and present in the PATH
• OpenJade 1.3.1-2 binaries, uncompress to f:\docbook\openjade-1.3.1.
• DocBook DTD 4.2, uncompress to f:\docbook\docbook.
• DocBook DSSSL 1.79, uncompress to f:\docbook\docbook-dsssl-1.79.
• ISO character entities, uncompress to f:\docbook\docbook.

With this done, some files in the docbook directory need renaming. Create a .bat file named r.bat (or whatever, really) in the docbook\docbook directory that looks like this:

@echo off
for %%f in (ISO*) do (
set foo=%%f
ren !foo! !foo:~0,3!-!foo:~3!.gml
)

And execute this file using:

cmd /v /c r.bat

That done, step into your PostgreSQL installation tree in doc\src\sgml. Run the following commands (beware of linebreaks!):

set SGML_CATALOG_FILES=f:\docbook\openjade-1.3.1\dsssl\catalog;f:\docbook\docbook\docbook.cat

perl f:\docbook\docbook-dsssl-1.79\bin\collateindex.pl -f -g -o bookindex.sgml -N

perl mk_feature_tables.pl YES ..\..\..\src\backend\catalog\sql_feature_packages.txt ..\..\..\src\backend\catalog\sql_features.txt > features-supported.sgml

perl mk_feature_tables.pl NO ..\..\..\src\backend\catalog\sql_feature_packages.txt ..\..\..\src\backend\catalog\sql_features.txt > features-unsupported.sgml

f:\docbook\openjade-1.3.1\bin\openjade -V draft-mode -wall -wno-unused-param -wno-empty -D . -c f:\docbook\docbook-dsssl-1.79\catalog -d stylesheet.dsl -i output-html -t sgml postgres.sgml

perl f:\docbook\docbook-dsssl-1.79\bin\collateindex.pl -f -g -i 'bookindex' -o bookindex.sgml HTML.index

f:\docbook\openjade-1.3.1\bin\openjade -V draft-mode -wall -wno-unused-param -wno-empty -D . -c f:\docbook\docbook-dsssl-1.79\catalog -d stylesheet.dsl -i output-html -t sgml postgres.sgml

Yes, it runs the build twice. That's to generate the indexes. If you have changed your docs, you usually don't need to re-run that part - just run the final openjade call over and over again.

This is all run outside of msys, with no requirements at all on either mingw or cygwin.

Not been doing too much PostgreSQL related stuff lately (thus no blog posts). Couple of reasons - lots to do at work before summer, and since it's now sailing season no (or at least a lot less) PostgreSQL in the weekends.

Quick status report on my current pg work: The win32-build-with-visual-c++ initial code patch has been applied. Still to do is a couple of minor things (there's a tiny patch for pl/perl for example), and then the actual build scripts. The build scripts work, but they are not cleaned up all the way yet. I also need to finish porting over things like gen_fmgroids that will be needed to be able to build from CVS.

Finally, I need to do something around the regression tests. Haven't decided yet if it might be easiest to just run the regression tests under msys against a VC++ built backend, or if I need to get them running outside it yet. And it does have to integrate with the buildfarm some way or other... (Currently running parts from msys and parts outside, and the backend does *pass* all the regression tests, but it's not trivial to run them)

But hopefully it'll all be worth it - we'd finally get things like proper debugger support on Windows! (And faster buildtimes, and judging by the results of other projects slightly better actual performance as well)

Right now I'm not particularly disappointed that I didn't get a slot at the conference, consdering that'd give me an even tighter schedule right now. Now I get to just listen and pick on others

And finally, happy midsummer to all those who celebrate it - and of course to those that don't as well.