Re: Client-only Meson Build From Sources

Building only a subset of libraries / binaries would be sufficient for our use case (and even only building a subset of the tree would get us most of the way there). 

A configure-time switch to only build client binaries would be ideal but perhaps that could be a long term goal.

In our fork we tried to remove anything that wasn't relevant for having a functioning client. 

If this group is open to it, maybe we could figure out how to approach the low hanging fruit first.

Best,

Benjamin 

On Wed, Oct 22, 2025 at 4:02 AM Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de> wrote:

Hi,

On 2025-10-21 12:02:27 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> Benjamin Leff <benjamin.w.leff@gmail.com> writes:
> >> I believe the prevailing opinion was that the amount
> >> of time saved by not building all of PG didn't justify the maintenance
> >> effort to keep the build scripts working for that case
>
> > IMO, it’s not just about time. For bare bones package managers when there’s
> > no need to build the server, this saves a few GB.
>
> It's still fundamentally about trading off machine resources versus
> people time, though, and that tradeoff is not getting more attractive.

The impact really depends on what we define a client-only build as.

It'd not be hard at all to add a meta target that just builds a subset of the
tree. It'd be slightly harder, but still not that hard, to add a target to
install just a subset of libraries / binaries.

What would be a bit harder would be to add a configure-time switch to only
build client binaries. Mainly because, I think, it'd increase the test matrix
more than a dedicated build target would.

Benjamin, what precisely are you looking for with a client-only build?

Greetings,

Andres Freund