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.

-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.

-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.

-o

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

-p

TCP port to listen on.

-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.

ENVIRONMENT

LC_ALL

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

TMPDIR

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

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)