compiling pg_repack on Ubuntu 12.04 with apt.postgresql.org packages [SOLVED]

[jberkus]

Posting this issue here just in case anyone else runs into it.

The problem:
Ubuntu 12.04
PostgreSQL 9.3 installed from apt.postgresql.org packages.

root@dev-postgres:/var/lib/postgresql/pg_repack# make
make[1]: Entering directory `/var/lib/postgresql/pg_repack/bin'
gcc -g -O2 -fstack-protector --param=ssp-buffer-size=4 -Wformat -Wformat-security -Werror=format-security -I/usr/include/mit-krb5 -fPIC -pie -DLINUX_OOM_SCORE_ADJ=0 -fno-omit-frame-pointer -Wall -Wmissing-prototypes -Wpointer-arith -Wdeclaration-after-statement -Wendif-labels -Wmissing-format-attribute -Wformat-security -fno-strict-aliasing -fwrapv -fexcess-precision=standard -g pg_repack.o pgut/pgut.o pgut/pgut-fe.o -L/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu -lpq -L/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu -Wl,-Bsymbolic-functions -Wl,-z,relro -Wl,-z,now -Wl,--as-needed -L/usr/lib/mit-krb5 -L/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/mit-krb5 -L/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu -Wl,--as-needed -lpgport -lpgcommon -lssl -lcrypto -lkrb5 -lcom_err -lgssapi_krb5 -lz -ledit -lcrypt -ldl -lm -o pg_repack
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -ledit
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make[1]: *** [pg_repack] Error 1

The solution:

Install "libedit-dev" from the Ubuntu Repositories.

Reason:

pg_repack gets a list of gcc linking flags from the package libpq-dev. That includes libedit, but libedit-dev is not marked as a dependancy of libpq-dev, so it's not installed.

Underlying issue will be raised with apt.postgresql.org.

[jberkus]

Follow-up question: does it actually make sense to pull the full list of GCC flags from libpq-dev?

[schmiddy]

(Sorry for the late follow-up)

Yeah, from the perspective of an end-user it's silly to have pg_repack requiring libedit / libreadline.

Unfortunately we are being given the LIBS we think we need to link against by pg_config and it feels dodgy/wrong for us to ignore its instructions, although we do it anyway. I suppose we could filter out -lreadline and -ledit as well, I don't reckon we should ever need anything from those libraries. @dvarrazzo what do you think?

And @jberkus I'm a bit out of the loop on the debian packages, did libedit-dev ever get added as a dependency of libpq-dev?

[MichaelDBA]

Closing this issue since the recompiling issue is on old distro (Ubuntu 12.04) and a very old EOLed PG Version (9.3).