Re: Client-only Meson Build From Sources

Building only a subset of libraries / binaries would be sufficient for our
use case (and even only building a subset of the tree would get us most of
the way there).

A configure-time switch to only build client binaries would be ideal but
perhaps that could be a long term goal.

In our fork we tried to remove anything that wasn't relevant for having a
functioning client.

If this group is open to it, maybe we could figure out how to approach the
low hanging fruit first.

Best,
Benjamin

On Wed, Oct 22, 2025 at 4:02 AM Andres Freund <andres(at)anarazel(dot)de> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On 2025-10-21 12:02:27 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> > Benjamin Leff <benjamin(dot)w(dot)leff(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> > >> I believe the prevailing opinion was that the amount
> > >> of time saved by not building all of PG didn't justify the maintenance
> > >> effort to keep the build scripts working for that case
> >
> > > IMO, it’s not just about time. For bare bones package managers when
> there’s
> > > no need to build the server, this saves a few GB.
> >
> > It's still fundamentally about trading off machine resources versus
> > people time, though, and that tradeoff is not getting more attractive.
>
> The impact really depends on what we define a client-only build as.
>
> It'd not be hard at all to add a meta target that just builds a subset of
> the
> tree. It'd be slightly harder, but still not that hard, to add a target to
> install just a subset of libraries / binaries.
>
> What would be a bit harder would be to add a configure-time switch to only
> build client binaries. Mainly because, I think, it'd increase the test
> matrix
> more than a dedicated build target would.
>
> Benjamin, what precisely are you looking for with a client-only build?
>
> Greetings,
>
> Andres Freund
>
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