postgres-up

Make developing with Postgres as convenient as developing with Sqlite.

postgres-up lets you create and run self-contained Postgres instances with a single command. All the database state (including the connection socket) lives in a single directory which can be easily copied and moved about so you can easily create experimental "forks" of your database.

If you need to run different versions of Postgres for different projects, that's supported too.

Nothing to run as root; no configuration: just type a single command and you're ready to go.

Installation

This is a standalone bash script, just copy it somewhere you want it:

curl -O https://raw.github.com/evansd/postgres-up/master/postgres-up && chmod a+x postgres-up

The idea is that you can bundle a copy of this script in your project repository so developers only need to type a single command to create a database and start working.

Notes

You will, of course, need the Postgres binaries installed somewhere. If postgres-up can't find Postgres it will display hints as to how to install it on your system.
Hopefully this is obvious, but this is for developing applications with Postgres, absolutely not for running Postgres in production!

Usage

To create a new database (or start using an existing one):

$ ./postgres-up
Using Postgres 9.2 binaries in /usr/lib/postgresql/9.2/bin
Found existing database in /home/dave/projects/postgres-up/pgdata

- To export this connection info:
  export DATABASE_URL='postgres://postgres@localhost/postgres?host=/home/dave/projects/postgres-up/pgdata'

To connect with the CLI client to a database you're already running:

$ ./postgres-up psql

To load a database dump into your database:

$ ./postgres-up pg_restore <path/to/dump/file>

In general, to run any Postgres command against your database:

$ ./postgres-up <command_name> <command_args ...>

Configuration

postgres-up will run quite happily without any configuration, but you can optionally create a config file in the same directory as the script called postgres-up.config:

# Example config file for postgres-up
#
# This file is entirely optional: default values will be used if it is missing
#
# This file should be placed in the same directory as the postgres-up script
#
# This file is read by 'sourcing' it in bash, so you can use any bash constructs
# you like to set the config variables

# Directory to store data files, evaluated relative to the config file path
# Default is ./pgdata
postgres_data_dir=./pgdata

# Postgres version to use (major and minor version only e.g. 9.2 not 9.2.4)
# If not specified will use the first version it finds
postgres_version=9.2

# Directories in which to look for Postgres binaries
# Sensible defaults will be used if this is not specified
postgres_bin_path="/my/special/postgres/install:$postgres_bin_path"

# You can set default arguments for any Postgres command by setting
# a variable like this:
# <command_name>_args=' --myarg=myvalue'
# For example, to disable fsync for your Postgres instance:
# postgres_args='--fsync=off'

Additionally, any of the variables set in the config file can also be set by passing them in the shell environment.

Compatibility

Currently tested on Ubuntu 13.04 and OS X 10.8 but I aiming for as wide as possible *nix compatibility so if you have problems running this let me know. (Windows compatibility is not a target unfortunately.)

evansd / postgres-up