Postgres for Mac OS X has three install options:
- Using a package management system. Fink, MacPorts and Homebrew all have it. I've tried only MacPorts and it works fine.
- Manually downloading and compiling it.
- Using EntrepriseDB's installer. It can be found here.
Options 1) and 2) require Xcode. Xcode is a large development package for OS X. It installs an IDE, compilers and unix tools. Options 1) and 2) use the unix tools.
I don't want to install Xcode, even though there is a way to limit it's memory footprint. Here's how (the question was with negative rating when I found it, but the answer is useful).
Anyway I don't want to install Xcode, and on my last OS X I only installed a couple of databases. That made the whole ports thing a bit useless.
So I tried the EnterpriseDB's installer. It failed with
Problem running post-install step. Installation may not complete correctly
The database cluster initialisation failed.
The official sites said: Lion is not yet supported: link. I didn't want to install some package management solution so I wanted a solution.
I found one here. On a poker site - kill me now. It seems to be the easiest one. Just create a postgres user using the Users & Groups preference tab. Don't create a Sharing only user, it doesn't work with it - I tried. Create a normal user. Everything works like a charm:
I tried the new postgres 9.0.4, but it failed with "invalid stream header: BB656430" when serving binary data from an import from 8.4.x. I went back to 8.4.x.
EntrepriseDB's installer creates an uninstaller, installs pgAdmin, works nice. User-friendly.