make installcheck - connect as different user?

[Matt DeLuco]

Hello again!

Is there any means of specifying a Postgres user to pass along to the installcheck target?

I'm building a Docker image and it's convenient to just run everything as root including the installation of pgtap. However make installcheck fails because there is no "root" user in my instance of Postgres - can I pass a different username e.g. "postgres" to installcheck? (Auth is set to trust.)

I had a poke around in the Makefile and some scripts in the tools/ subdir, but nothing stood out to me.

Thanks!

Matt

[David E. Wheeler]

On Sep 6, 2025, at 22:22, 'Matt DeLuco' via pgTAP Users <pgtap...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> Is there any means of specifying a Postgres user to pass along to the installcheck target?

Yes, pgTAP supports all of the usual libpq environment variables, including PGUSER. The test workflow takes advantage of this feature:

https://github.com/theory/pgtap/blob/5b0daf5922b2991ff83bbf5ba68c678eae71a408/.github/workflows/test.yml#L35

> I'm building a Docker image and it's convenient to just run everything as root including the installation of pgtap. However make installcheck fails because there is no "root" user in my instance of Postgres - can I pass a different username e.g. "postgres" to installcheck? (Auth is set to trust.)

You cannot start Postgres as root, so that user is not available to you. What Postgres image are you basing it on?

Best,

David

[Matt DeLuco]

I'm using apt.postgresql.org.sh from postgres-common - inspired by your work (I think) on the pgxn-tools image.

root isn't starting Postgres on the container, but it is building pgTAP.

I'll give $PGUSER a try - thank you David!

Matt

[Matt DeLuco]

I just realized - I don't think I can run installcheck on the image build because it requires a running instance. But I save apt.postgresql.org.sh for installing and running a specific Postgres version when running the container.

[David E. Wheeler]

On Sep 11, 2025, at 14:15, 'Matt DeLuco' via pgTAP Users <pgtap...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> I just realized - I don't think I can run installcheck on the image build because it requires a running instance. But I save apt.postgresql.org.sh for installing and running a specific Postgres version when running the container.

Have you considered using the pgxn tools Docker image?

https://hub.docker.com/r/pgxn/pgxn-tools

Best,

David

[Matt DeLuco]

Yes, I actually started with pgxn-tools but something didn't work for me. Very likely there was something I didn't understand because I looked at early in the process of trying to figure things out.

I will revisit - thank you David!

Matt

> On Sep 12, 2025, at 08:36, David E. Wheeler <da...@justatheory.com> wrote:

> <signature.asc>

[Austin Ziegler]

Hi, Matt

I stopped maintaining a fairly *comprehensive* sqitch+pgtap image back in February:

https://github.com/KineticCafe/docker-sqitch-pgtap

This loads/unloads pgtap during test execution rather than installing it permanently.

-a

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