Re: Client-only Meson Build From Sources

Hey All

Wanted to follow up going into the new year.

For our use case installing a subset of the tree is sufficient.

In order of preference / difficulty:
1) Subset of tree
2) Subset of libs / binaries
3) Configure-time switch to only build client binaries

Is there enough interest to do #1? How can I help?

Happy New Year,
Benjamin

--
Benjamin W. Leff

On Wed, Dec 3, 2025 at 2:16 PM Benjamin Leff <benjamin(dot)w(dot)leff(at)gmail(dot)com>
wrote:

> 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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>
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