[postgis-users] Adding PostGIS

[Markus Schaber]

Hi, Mark,

Mark Fenbers wrote:

> It's been quite a while since I did this, and I can no longer remember
> the answer to my question even though I've been down this road before. 
> When PostGIS is added to an existing PostgreSQL build, does PostgreSQL
> itself need to be recompiled with the PostGIS plug-in?  Or is PostGIS a
> separate layer, such that the PostgreSQL does not have to be recompiled?

AFAIR, it depends on the capabilities of your build tool chain.

PostGIS links against GEOS which needs the C++ runtime library. The
liblwgeom.so (which contains postgis) is loaded by the postmaster via
dynamic loading mechanisms.

If your PostgreSQL was build with a current GNU toolchain, the dynamic
loaders can cope with this, but for older toolchains, you had to build
your postmaster with additional linker flags that told about the
libstdc++ dependency.

Markus