Building an extension

We have already covered the basics of creating a script file and a .control file. Actually, that is all that is necessary for a PostgreSQL extension. You may simply copy these files into the shared extension directory on your computer and execute the following command:

CREATE EXTENSION postal;

This will install your extension into the currently selected database.

The shared extension path is dependent on how PostgreSQL is installed, but for Ubuntu, it is /usr/share/postgresql/9.2/extension.

However, there is a much better way to do this that works with any package manager on any platform.

PostgreSQL provides an extension building toolkit as a part of the server development package. To install this package on Ubuntu, you can type:

sudo apt-get install postgresql-dev-9.2

This will install all of the PostgreSQL source code necessary to create and install an extension. You would then create a file named Makefile in the same directory as the rest of your extension files. The...