NAME

pg_tmp — quickly spin up temporary PostgreSQL database

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

The pg_tmp utility creates a temporary instance of PostgreSQL and prints the connection URL to standard output. pg_tmp spawns a background process that initializes a new database under /tmp/ephemeralpg.*/${PGVER} which is used by subsequent invocations to reduce startup time. The arguments are as follows:

-k

Keep the temporary directory after the server is shut down.

-w

Shut down and remove the database after the specified timeout. If one or more clients are still connected then pg_tmp sleeps and retries again after the same interval. A value of 0 will leave the server running indefinitely. The default is 60 seconds.

-t

Use a TCP port selected by getsocket(1). A port may be selected using the -p flag. Otherwise the path to a Unix socket is returned.

-o

Specifies extra-options to be passed directly to the postgres(1) binary. These options should usually be surrounded by quotes to ensure that they are passed through as a group.

-d

Specify the temporary directory to use. May be used with the optional arguments initdb, start and is required for stop. If this option is used pg_tmp will not initialize a new database for subsequent invocations use.

ENVIRONMENT

TMPDIR

base directory in which to create and run the ephemeral instances of postgres(1)

LC_ALL

Set locale to ensure proper startup on Mac OS. If not set the default is ‘C’.

EXAMPLES

Create a temporary database and run a query:

uri=$(pg_tmp)
psql $uri -f my.sql

Start a temporary server with a custom extension:

uri=$(pg_tmp -o "-c shared_preload_libraries=$PWD/auth_hook")
psql $uri -c "SELECT 1"

Start a temporary database that recycles WAL segments to reduce space

pg_tmp -o "-c max_wal_size=48MB -c min_wal_size=32M"

SEE ALSO

pg_ctl(1)