I think the best solution is just not to build the perl interface
together with postgresql. It will never work, because 'make test'
needs the postmaster to be up and running.
I will argue strongly that we DO want to build the perl interface
straight out of the box. Ideally we will have a COMPLETE system that
can be built and installed in one pass, such that every part of it
will work. I have demonstrated that it is possible (at least on
NetBSD) to do this and still resolve the inter-library references
between the perl interface and libpq.
We cannot kill this idea because 'make test' doesn't run without the
postmaster. After all, NONE of the regression tests do either!
Nevertheless, we still build and install the complete system; then run
the tests. The same is applicable to the perl interface.
Don't change Makefile.PL, POSTGRES_HOME is needed when building the perl
module outside the postgresql source-tree.
This may be the case and is a good reason to include the conditional
in Makefile.PL. Nothing is really lost by doing so.
Cheers,
Brook