Universal Build of PostgreSQL 8.1.3

Traditionally I’ve used DarwinPorts for managing the packages installed on my Mac laptop. Sadly, there has been some falling out between the OpenDarwin folks and Apple recently. For this and other reasons having DarwinPorts build Mac OS X-friendly Intel binaries cleanly (let alone universal binaries) seems highly unlikely.

In order to produce things that’ll work on both PowerPC Macs and ICBMs (Intel-CPU based Macs, what an acronym) you have to build it yourself or find someone else who has taken the time to do it.

The Mac Python crew have been working for a couple months now on a universal Python 2.4.2 install that passes its own regression testing (unlike the one that Apple ships). They have a copy of the installer .dmg available online. (There is also a universal Ruby online if you swing that way.)

One of the problems I’ve encountered, after using these builds, is that the universal Python really wants its C-based modules compiled as universal builds also. It’s not such a big deal when the modules are standalone (and pay attention to the CFLAGS that the Python build was made with). It is more problematic when they want to link against other things, which then must also be built universal.

In today’s adventure, I wanted to build the psycopg module that is a way to access PostgreSQL databases from inside Python. This meant making a universal build of PostgreSQL. Marc Liyanage has some universal builds available, but they were for 8.1.2 rather than 8.1.3. His ViewCVS is install is broken right now, but I was able to get the Perl snippet from the Google cache to get the build to succeed.

PostgreSQL actually builds remarkably easy aside from an oft-repeated bit where it takes the myriad object files (.o) from each smaller component and makes them into one larger object file. Apparently ld doesn’t know how to consolidate “fat” object files. To workaround this you have to run ld once for each architecture (ppc, i386) then lipo the resultant files together. Marc’s one-liner takes care of this change in the various makefiles.

find . -name Makefile -print -exec perl -p -i.backup -e 's/\Q$(LD) $(LDREL) $(LDOUT)\E (\S+) (.+)/\$(LD) -arch ppc \$(LDREL) \$(LDOUT) $1.ppc $2; \$(LD) -arch i386 \$(LDREL) \$(LDOUT) $1.i386 $2; lipo -create -output $1 $1.ppc $1.i386/' {} \;

Psycopg ignores CFLAGS given to it during configure and took a slight bit of monkeying around to use the magic flags that are in the Apple documentation to build. Other than that it went smoothly though.

I stuck the PostgreSQL build into /Library/Frameworks/PostgreSQL.framework for good measure. I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad idea, but it does keep it from getting stomped on by native builds done in OpenDarwin or Fink or whatever.

It’s about 8MB all wrapped up so I’m not going to post it here, but if people really want it maybe I can work something out. That’s all for now…