Compiling psqlODBC on Windows

psqlODBC is built on Windows with the PowerShell scripts in winbuild\ and installer\, which drive MSBuild and WiX. The official releases are built this way, by the MSBuild workflow in the repository.

Each script has a batch file of the same name at the top of the source tree, such as BuildAll.bat, for use from Command Prompt.

Requirements

• Visual Studio 2015 or later, up to Visual Studio 2026, with the “Desktop development with C++” workload. Install the MSVC build tools for each platform you build: x86 and x64, and ARM64 for ARM64 builds. The build tools without the IDE are enough.

• libpq for each platform: the headers (include), the import library (lib) and the DLLs (bin). The PostgreSQL installers for Windows include 64-bit libpq. For x86 and ARM64 you build libpq from the PostgreSQL source; the release workflow builds it with Meson, with OpenSSL for SSL support.

• WiX 6 with the UI extension, to build installers:

  dotnet tool install --global wix --version "6.*"
  wix extension add --global WixToolset.UI.wixext/6.0.0

• The mimalloc submodule, to build with the mimalloc allocator. Clone with git clone --recurse-submodules, or run git submodule update --init in an existing clone.

• For the regression tests: a running PostgreSQL server, and GNU diff on PATH, for example from GnuWin32 DiffUtils, which the release workflow uses.

PowerShell must be allowed to run local scripts. If Get-ExecutionPolicy reports Restricted or AllSigned, run:

Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned

Configuring the build

The scripts read the location of libpq for each platform from winbuild\configuration.xml. To create or edit it, run:

.\winbuild\editConfiguration.ps1

or copy winbuild\configuration_template.xml to winbuild\configuration.xml and edit it by hand. For example:

<Configuration version="" formatVersion="0.4" vcversion="" toolset="">
  <x86 disabled="no">
    <libpq version="y">
      <include>D:\postgresql86\include</include>
      <lib>D:\postgresql86\lib</lib>
      <bin>D:\postgresql86\bin</bin>
    </libpq>
  </x86>
  <x64>
    <libpq version="y">
      <include>D:\postgresql\include</include>
      <lib>D:\postgresql\lib</lib>
      <bin>D:\postgresql\bin</bin>
    </libpq>
  </x64>
  <arm64>
    <libpq version="y">
      <include>C:\postgresql_arm64\include</include>
      <lib>C:\postgresql_arm64\lib</lib>
      <bin>C:\postgresql_arm64\bin</bin>
    </libpq>
  </arm64>
</Configuration>

Leave vcversion and toolset empty to use the newest Visual Studio installed. After each build, BuildAll.ps1 records the Visual Studio version and toolset it used in the BuildResult element of this file.

Building the drivers

.\winbuild\BuildAll.ps1

builds the Release drivers for x86 and x64. The parameters are:

For example, to build the ARM64 drivers:

.\winbuild\BuildAll.ps1 -Platform ARM64

Each platform, driver type and configuration gets its own output directory, named <cpu>_<type>_<configuration>, for example x64_Unicode_Release or arm64_ANSI_Debug. The directories are created at the top of the source tree, or under the directory in the PSQLODBC_OBJBASE environment variable if it is set. Each holds:

Running the regression tests

.\winbuild\regress.ps1 -DsnInfo "SERVER=localhost|DATABASE=contrib_regression|PORT=5432|UID=postgres|PWD=password"

builds the test programs and runs them against the drivers that BuildAll.ps1 built, with no installer needed. The first run registers a test driver and a System DSN, which asks for administrator rights. Without -DsnInfo, the script prompts for the server, port, database, user and password.

The test programs and results go in winbuild\test_x86, winbuild\test_x64 or winbuild\test_arm64. Differences from the expected output are written to regression.diffs there.

Building the installers

.\installer\buildInstallers.ps1

builds psqlodbc_x86.msi and psqlodbc_x64.msi, with the matching merge modules (.msm), into installer\x86 and installer\x64, or under PSQLODBC_OBJBASE if it is set. When it builds both, it also builds the psqlodbc-setup.exe bootstrapper. Use -cpu x86, -cpu x64 or -cpu arm64 to build one platform.

The installers bundle libpq and the DLLs it depends on, such as the OpenSSL libraries, from the libpq bin directory in the configuration, together with the Visual C++ runtime. -ExcludeRuntime leaves out the Visual C++ runtime, -RedistUCRT bundles the Visual C++ Redistributable, and -NoPDB leaves out the debug symbol files. See installer\README.txt for more.

Building with NMAKE

win64.mak builds the drivers from a Visual Studio Developer Command Prompt, without the PowerShell scripts. It builds for the architecture of the prompt, despite its name. It does not build installers.

nmake /f win64.mak
nmake /f win64.mak ANSI_VERSION=yes
nmake /f win64.mak world

The first builds the Unicode driver and the second the ANSI driver. world builds both drivers for x64 and for x86, but it switches architecture with the setenv command of the Windows SDK 7.1 command prompt, which Visual Studio’s Developer Command Prompt doesn’t have. The defaults are in windows-defaults.mak. To change them, create windows-local.mak in the same directory, or set them on the command line: