In general, a modern Unix-compatible platform should be able to run PostgreSQL. The platforms that had received specific testing at the time of release are described in Section 17.6 below.
The following software packages are required for building PostgreSQL:
      
      GNU make version 3.81 or newer is required; other
      make programs or older GNU make versions will not work.
      (GNU make is sometimes installed under
      the name gmake.)  To test for GNU
      make enter:
make --version
Alternatively, PostgreSQL can be built using Meson. This is currently experimental. If you choose to use Meson, then you don't need GNU make, but the other requirements below still apply.
The minimum required version of Meson is 0.54.
You need an ISO/ANSI C compiler (at least C99-compliant). Recent versions of GCC are recommended, but PostgreSQL is known to build using a wide variety of compilers from different vendors.
tar is required to unpack the source distribution, in addition to either gzip or bzip2.
Flex 2.5.35 or later and Bison 2.3 or later are required. Other lex and yacc programs cannot be used.
Perl 5.14 or later is needed during the build process and to run some test suites. (This requirement is separate from the requirements for building PL/Perl; see below.)
      
      
      The GNU Readline library is used by
      default.  It allows psql (the
      PostgreSQL command line SQL interpreter) to remember each
      command you type, and allows you to use arrow keys to recall and
      edit previous commands.  This is very helpful and is strongly
      recommended.  If you don't want to use it then you must specify
      the --without-readline option to
      configure. As an alternative, you can often use the
      BSD-licensed libedit library, originally
      developed on NetBSD. The
      libedit library is
      GNU Readline-compatible and is used if
      libreadline is not found, or if
      --with-libedit-preferred is used as an
      option to configure. If you are using a package-based
      Linux distribution, be aware that you need both the
      readline and readline-devel packages, if
      those are separate in your distribution.
     
      
      The zlib compression library is
      used by default. If you don't want to use it then you must
      specify the --without-zlib option to
      configure. Using this option disables
      support for compressed archives in pg_dump and
      pg_restore.
     
      The ICU library is used by default. If you don't want to use it then you must specify the --without-icu option to configure. Using this option disables support for ICU collation features (see Section 23.2).
     
ICU support requires the ICU4C package to be installed. The minimum required version of ICU4C is currently 4.2.
      By default,
      pkg-config
      will be used to find the required compilation options.  This is
      supported for ICU4C version 4.6 and later.
      For older versions, or if pkg-config is not
      available, the variables ICU_CFLAGS and
      ICU_LIBS can be specified to
      configure, like in this example:
./configure ... ICU_CFLAGS='-I/some/where/include' ICU_LIBS='-L/some/where/lib -licui18n -licuuc -licudata'
      (If ICU4C is in the default search path
      for the compiler, then you still need to specify nonempty strings in
      order to avoid use of pkg-config, for
      example, ICU_CFLAGS=' '.)
     
The following packages are optional. They are not required in the default configuration, but they are needed when certain build options are enabled, as explained below:
      To build the server programming language
      PL/Perl you need a full
      Perl installation, including the
      libperl library and the header files.
      The minimum required version is Perl 5.14.
      Since PL/Perl will be a shared
      library, the 
      libperl library must be a shared library
      also on most platforms.  This appears to be the default in
      recent Perl versions, but it was not
      in earlier versions, and in any case it is the choice of whomever
      installed Perl at your site.  configure will fail
      if building PL/Perl is selected but it cannot
      find a shared libperl.  In that case, you will have
      to rebuild and install Perl manually to be
      able to build PL/Perl.  During the
      configuration process for Perl, request a
      shared library.
     
      If you intend to make more than incidental use of
      PL/Perl, you should ensure that the
      Perl installation was built with the
      usemultiplicity option enabled (perl -V
      will show whether this is the case).
     
To build the PL/Python server programming language, you need a Python installation with the header files and the sysconfig module. The minimum required version is Python 3.2.
      Since PL/Python will be a shared
      library, the 
      libpython library must be a shared library
      also on most platforms.  This is not the case in a default
      Python installation built from source, but a
      shared library is available in many operating system
      distributions.  configure will fail if
      building PL/Python is selected but it cannot
      find a shared libpython.  That might mean that you
      either have to install additional packages or rebuild (part of) your
      Python installation to provide this shared
      library.  When building from source, run Python's
      configure with the --enable-shared flag.
     
To build the PL/Tcl procedural language, you of course need a Tcl installation. The minimum required version is Tcl 8.4.
To enable Native Language Support (NLS), that is, the ability to display a program's messages in a language other than English, you need an implementation of the Gettext API. Some operating systems have this built-in (e.g., Linux, NetBSD, Solaris), for other systems you can download an add-on package from https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/. If you are using the Gettext implementation in the GNU C library, then you will additionally need the GNU Gettext package for some utility programs. For any of the other implementations you will not need it.
      You need OpenSSL, if you want to support
      encrypted client connections.  OpenSSL is
      also required for random number generation on platforms that do not
      have /dev/urandom (except Windows).  The minimum
      required version is 1.0.2.
     
You need MIT Kerberos (for GSSAPI), OpenLDAP, and/or PAM, if you want to support authentication using those services.
You need LZ4, if you want to support compression of data with that method; see default_toast_compression and wal_compression.
You need Zstandard, if you want to support compression of data with that method; see wal_compression. The minimum required version is 1.4.0.
To build the PostgreSQL documentation, there is a separate set of requirements; see Section J.2.
If you need to get a GNU package, you can find it at your local GNU mirror site (see https://www.gnu.org/prep/ftp for a list) or at ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/.