Caution Upgrading
 

If you are going to upgrade PostgreSQL, instead of installing from scratch. Make sure you back up your old database. Information on performing backups on PostgreSQL can be found in the Administrating PostgreSQL chapters of this book.

Use the following command to install PostgreSQL:

gmake install

The gmake install command will install the freshly compiled source into the directory structure you chose in step 2. Before using the gmake install command, make sure you have the correct access permissions to your installation directories. On most machines, this will probably require access to the root user. However, it is possible to build PostgreSQL without root permission. For example, you could build PostgreSQL underneath your own home directory.

If you chose to configure the PostgreSQL source with the Perl or Python interface but did not have root access, you can still install the interfaces manually. In order to install the interfaces manually you can use the following commands.

gmake -C src/interfaces/perl5 install
gmake -C src/interfaces/python install

You may also want to install the header files for PostgreSQL. This is important because the default installation will only install the header files for client application development. If you are going to be using some of PostgreSQL's advanced functionality such as user-defined functions or database in C you will need this functionality. To install the all the required header files perform the following command.

gmake install-all-headers
Note Keep in mind
 

The header files are only required for advanced PostgreSQL server-side development.