FindPostgreSQL.cmake won't work on ubuntu

Question

• Ubuntu 12.04
• CMake 2.8.9
• Postgresql 9.2.2

I'm trying to get the FindPostgreSQL module to find /usr/include/postgresql/libpq-fe.h.

Here's what I have in my CMakeLists.txt:

find_package(PostgreSQL REQUIRED)

This is the error I get:

CMake Error at /usr/share/cmake-2.8/Modules/FindPackageHandleStandardArgs.cmake:97 (MESSAGE):
  Could NOT find PostgreSQL (missing: PostgreSQL_TYPE_INCLUDE_DIR) (found
  version "9.2.2")
Call Stack (most recent call first):
  /usr/share/cmake-2.8/Modules/FindPackageHandleStandardArgs.cmake:288 (_FPHSA_FAILURE_MESSAGE)
  /usr/share/cmake-2.8/Modules/FindPostgreSQL.cmake:155 (find_package_handle_standard_args)
  CMakeLists.txt:7 (find_package)

I added the following lines before calling find_package but it didn't seem to have any effect.

set(PostgreSQL_ADDITIONAL_VERSIONS "9.2.2")
set(PostgreSQL_ADDITIONAL_SEARCH_PATHS ${PostgreSQL_ADDITIONAL_SEARCH_PATHS} "/usr/include/postgresql")

I also tried googling for PostgreSQL_TYPE_INCLUDE_DIR but didn't find anything. What else can I try?

Answer 1

On Ubuntu you can also work around that issue by calling cmake with having PostgreSQL_TYPE_INCLUDE_DIR defined like this:

cmake -DPostgreSQL_TYPE_INCLUDE_DIR=/usr/include/postgresql/

See the bug report [1] for this issue and a potential fix [2]. Álso see the discussion about the reasoning behind the move on the debian mailinglist at [3].

On Ubuntu/Debian, starting with PostgreSQL 9.3 the header file pg_type.h is moved to a separate package (from libpq-dev to postgresql-server-dev) and consequently the file pg_type.h is moved to a new location

• [1] https://gitlab.kitware.com/cmake/cmake/issues/17223
• [2] https://gitlab.kitware.com/cmake/cmake/commit/d4fd30d8d8f5b9c4b5a110b4676cad2a19d7c314
• [3] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=314427

Answer 2

Make sure you've installed both libpq-dev\ and postgresql-server-dev-all (or specific version e.g. postgresql-server-dev-9.4)

$ dpkg --get-selections | grep -e "libpq-dev\|postgresql-server-dev"

in case you're missing some package

apt-get install libpq-dev postgresql-server-dev-all

should fix it.

Answer 3

After a bit more debugging I figured out that it's getting stuck trying to find pg_type.h

This file is located in /usr/include/postgresql/catalog/pg_types.h but the module is expecting to find it in /usr/include/postgresql/server/catalog/pg_types.h

find_path(PostgreSQL_TYPE_INCLUDE_DIR
  NAMES catalog/pg_type.h
  PATHS
   # Look in other places.
   ${PostgreSQL_ROOT_DIRECTORIES}
  PATH_SUFFIXES
    pgsql/server
    postgresql/server
    include/server
  # Help the user find it if we cannot.
  DOC "The ${PostgreSQL_INCLUDE_DIR_MESSAGE}"
)

It works if I add postgresql to the PATH_SUFFIXES

find_path(PostgreSQL_TYPE_INCLUDE_DIR
  NAMES catalog/pg_type.h
  PATHS
   # Look in other places.
   ${PostgreSQL_ROOT_DIRECTORIES}
  PATH_SUFFIXES
    postgresql
    pgsql/server
    postgresql/server
    include/server
  # Help the user find it if we cannot.
  DOC "The ${PostgreSQL_INCLUDE_DIR_MESSAGE}"
)

Answer 4

From Linux Mint 17.3 ("Rosa") with PostgreSQL 9.3, I had to adjust ilia choly's solution (interestingly, the suggested postgres entry in the list was already present in the file, but wasn't enough to fix things).

I had to edit /usr/share/cmake-2.8/Modules/FindPostgreSQL.cmake around line 114 and add postgresql/9.3 so that the find_path call looks like

find_path(PostgreSQL_TYPE_INCLUDE_DIR
  NAMES catalog/pg_type.h
  PATHS
   # Look in other places.
   ${PostgreSQL_ROOT_DIRECTORIES}
  PATH_SUFFIXES
    postgresql/9.3
    postgresql
    pgsql/server
    postgresql/server
    include/server
  # Help the user find it if we cannot.
  DOC "The ${PostgreSQL_INCLUDE_DIR_MESSAGE}"
)