Is there some method on Ubuntu to request newest postgresql postgis package rather than specific version?

Question

There is postgresql-9.3-postgis-2.1 and there is postgresql-9.4-postgis-2.1. Unfortunately 9.3 is available only on trusty and 9.4 is not available on trusty (see http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=postgresql-9.3-postgis-2.1 and http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=postgresql-9.4-postgis-2.1).

So any installation instructions/script must include something along "if your OS version is...". Is there some method to simply install newest postgresql postgis package?

Answer 1

I will give the steps for Ubuntu and Centos, as I have done both, they are very similar, and it might help someone else.

1. Step 1 is to ensure that you have the build-essential package installed. This includes gcc, make, etc.
2. Install dev headers for other libraries that are used by Postgres/Postgis. This includes libxml, json-c, geos, proj4 and gdal.
3. Get Postgres source and unzip
4. Get Postgis. git clone https://github.com/postgis/postgis.git postgis.git

Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install build-essential
sudo apt-get install libxml2-dev
sudo apt-get install libjson-c-dev
sudo apt-get install libgdal-dev
sudo apt-get install libproj-dev 
sudo apt-get install libgeos-dev

Centos:

sudo yum groupinstall "Development tools"
sudo yum install postgresql-devel.x86_64
sudo yum install libxml2-devel.x86_64
sudo yum install json-c-devel.x86_64
sudo yum install geos-devel.x86_64
sudo yum install proj-devel.x86_64
sudo yum install gdal-devel.x86_64

Unzip Postgres, cd to unzip dir, run ./configure. There are some options, and ./configure --help will show you, but in general, the defaults work well. If you are installing multiple version of Postgres, you might want to set ./configure --prefix=/path_to_install, otherwise the files will go in /usr/local/pgsql/

./configure 
sudo gmake

If you have issues with libraries not being found, you might need to fiddle with ldconfig.

git clone https://github.com/postgis/postgis.git postgis.git
cd postgis.git
./configure --with-pgconfig=/usr/local/bin/pg_config
make
sudo make install

There are many options to Postgis configure, and you may need to set the path to geos-config and other libs, especially if you have previous versions of libs. The most important one tends to be the path to pg_config.

Then from psql prompt:

 CREATE Extension Postgis;

Or

 ALTER Extension Postgis UPDATE;