CMake-based PostgreSQL Extensions

Template project for building CMake-based PostgreSQL extensions.

The project is the base for creating PostgreSQL extensions using CMake rather than the supported PGXS scripts. The macros distributed with this project use pg_config to figure out what settings are necessary.

CMake has a few advantages compared to vanilla Make:

It is well-supported by various IDEs on differen platforms.
It supports cross-platform file manipulations.
It has cross-platform support for configuration files, allowing you to generate files from templates.
It has cross-platform support for handling shared libraries, static libraries, and executables.
It has cross-platform support for creating packages.

Dependencies

To build the extensions you need to have:

CMake version 3.10 or later
PostgreSQL server version 10 or later.
PostgreSQL server development files version 10 or later.

You can install these dependencies on Ubuntu (18.04 or later) using:

apt install cmake postgresql postgresql-server-dev-all

Building

To build the extensions for installation using the default prefix (/usr/local) and keep the build files separate from the source files:

cmake -S . -B build
cmake --build build

If you want to use a different installation prefix than the default, you can set PGPATH to point to the prefix where you have installed PostgreSQL. For example, /usr/local if you have a local installation that used this prefix, or as in my case, when I have several versions installed in parallel, I could use /usr/local/pgsql/11.7 like this:

cmake -S . -B build -DPGPATH=/usr/local/pgsql/16.2
cmake --build ..

Creating Extensions

The macro add_postgresql_extension can be used to create extensions. Here is a minimal top-level CMakeLists.txt file that creates a single extension.

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.10)
project(my_package)

# Make sure FindPostgreSQL.cmake is in the module path.
list(APPEND CMAKE_MODULE_PATH ${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/cmake)

find_package(PostgreSQL REQUIRED)

add_postgresql_extension(magic
  VERSION 1.0
  SOURCES magic.c more_magic.c
  SCRIPTS magic--1.0.sql
  TESTS magic_puff magic_smoke)

The macro add_postgresql_extension takes a name of the extension, and several different options:

VERSION is the version of the package and is required.
SOURCES is a list of source files for the package. At least one source file need to be provided.
SCRIPTS are the upgrade and install scripts for the extension. At least one install script for the version need to be added, but you can have several different combinations of install and upgrade scripts.
TESTS is a list of regression tests. The test scripts are stored in the sql/ directory, and the expected output of the scripts are stored in the expected/ directory.
ENCODING gives the encoding of the script files and is used when generating the control file.
SCRIPT_TEMPLATES is an alternative to use for generating script files. The listed script template files will be used to generate scripts files by expanding variables in the template files.
REQUIRES is a list of dependencies of the extension on other extensions and is used when generating the control file.

The macro will create a library for installation with the appropriate name (for example, magic.so) and a control file for the extension will be automatically generated (named magic.control).

If any tests are given using TESTS, a test target to run the test will be added as well as a custom target to update the file with the expected output.

Having multiple extensions in the same repository

If you want to keep multiple extensions in the same repository, it is usually easier to keep them in a separate src directory with one directory for each extension. For example, here is a repository with two extensions column and trace and a directory common with shared code.

.
├── cmake
│   └── FindPostgreSQL.cmake
├── CMakeLists.txt
├── README.md
└── src
    ├── CMakeLists.txt
    ├── column
    │   ├── colam.c
    │   ├── colam.h
    │   ├── colam_handler.c
    │   └── Makefile
    ├── common
    │   ├── amutils.h
    │   ├── CMakeLists.txt
    │   ├── debug.c
    │   └── debug.h
    └── trace
        ├── CMakeLists.txt
        ├── expected
        │   ├── create.out
        │   ├── insert.out
        │   └── select.out
        ├── Makefile
        ├── sql
        │   ├── create.sql
        │   ├── insert.sql
        │   └── select.sql
        ├── traceam--0.1.sql
        ├── traceam.c
        ├── traceam.h
        └── traceam_handler.c

8 directories, 28 files

In this case, the top-level CMakeLists.txt look similar, but adds the src subdirectory:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.10)
project(tableam)

list(APPEND CMAKE_MODULE_PATH ${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/cmake)

find_package(PostgreSQL REQUIRED)

include_directories(${PostgreSQL_INCLUDE_DIRS}
                    ${PostgreSQL_SERVER_INCLUDE_DIRS})

add_subdirectory(src)

Inside the src directory, we then add the other extensions, but can also add the src directory as an include directory, allowing the different sub-packages reference each others:

include_directories(${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR})
add_subdirectory(common)
add_subdirectory(trace)

Extensions Available in the Repository

The repository contains a few basic examples right now that are C-like, but the intention is to create a basis for writing extensions in C++ with a focus on modern C++ (which right now means C++14 and later).