install-postgres-on-windows

PowerShell script to install PostgreSQL from a binary release zip on Windows.

No dependencies
MIT Licensed
Download binary release zips from EDB: https://www.enterprisedb.com/download-postgresql-binaries
Associated blog article can be found here: https://ideasawakened.com/post/2024-02-03-setup-postgresql-on-windows-from-zip

Summary

You can simply run the script with the DownloadLatest switch (Install-Postgres-On-Windows.ps1 -DownloadLatest) and the latest release zip will be downloaded, then automatically installed to C:\Postgres, and you will end up with a new Windows Service named Postgres actively running and accepting all local connections on port 5432. Alternately, manually download the latest release zip and provide it via the ArchiveFileName parameter. (Install-Postgres-On-Windows.ps1 -ArchiveFileName postgresql-16.1-1-windows-x64-binaries.zip)

Parameters

Note: you need to provide at least one parameter as you must either specify the ArchiveFileName or the DownloadLatest switch.

ArchiveFileName

This string parameter is the release zip to install (as previously downloaded from EDB.) An example of the current latest release zip is postgresql-16.1-1-windows-x64-binaries.zip which is 330MB in size.

DestinationPath

This optional string parameter is the path to unzip the binaries into and it defaults to C:\Postgres if not provided. In a full installation, there will be three child folders created: Admin, Data, and Server

ServiceName

This optional string parameter is the name of the new Windows Service created. If not provided, the ServiceName defaults to Postgres

ListenPort

If specified, this optional integer parameter will override the default TCP port the server listens on which is 5432 by default as set in postgresql.conf

DownloadLatest

If specified, this optional switch parameter overrides the ArchiveFileName and the latest release zip will be downloaded from EDB's website and installed. Unfortunately there does not seem to be an API available for this, so the script currently resorts to web scraping (and may be prone to breakage if they alter the format of their site.) The script will parse the files found on the download-postgresql-binaries page and pick the first one (as it will be the latest Windows installer.) The file will be saved as Postgres-Windows-Binaries.zip within the TEMP folder and deleted once the installation is completed.

UpdatePath

If this optional switch is specified, the script will update the PATH with the Postgres\bin folder (useful if you are running command line tools like psql.exe.)

InstallPGAdmin

If this optional switch is specified, the script will create an Admin child folder and unzip the pgAdmin 4 files. Including this switch adds about 760MB worth of space and increases the installation time. This is useful if you do not have pgAdmin or another tool like HeidiSQL already installed.

Custom Settings

I have added a few common parameters to configure the instance, and more may be added in the future. But, for now, these following settings were used for initdb during the initial installation process:

The default encoding is set to UTF8 with a locale of en_US.UTF-8
The folder used for the database cluster is set to DestinationPath\Data
The new Windows Service created is set to Automatic (Delayed Startup) and the service is started during the installation process.
The bootstrap superuser is named postgres and has postgres as its password
The default time zone is set to UTC

All settings not set by parameters, or listed above in Custom Settings, will utilize the Postgres default values, such as:

The default authentication method is trust which is meant for local workstations, not multi-user servers.
The default max_connections is set automatically by initdb and is typically set to 100.

darianmiller / install-postgres-on-windows