`brew install postgresql@16` does not link psql into /opt/homebrew/bin about homebrew-core

[willfaught]

@cho-m It seems to me that the result of this issue and #167593 is that it isn’t possible to “brew install” Postgres and have it working on your path out of the box. This isn’t a good user experience. I have to manually add the @16 bin to my path to get anything working. Wouldn’t following this pattern for all names that have multiple major versions/incompatible versions result in nothing being linked into PATH by default? That’s not very useful out of the box.

It seems better in my opinion to have a plain “postgresql” formula always install the latest major version, and let users install older versions if they want to use older DBs.

[SMillerDev]

I also find it strange that I can't have a single postgres installation that tracks with the major versions, and instead always need to specify a version.

This is how Postgres devs intend it to work since you can't migrate from one major version to another without manual intervention

[cho-m]

This is expected behavior because we can only automatically link a single PostgreSQL formula as all of them conflict with each other.

The version of PostgreSQL linked has to be the copy that "owns" the extension formulae (e.g. postgis, citus, etc.) due to how PostgreSQL detects extensions. This may be improved in future, but even then only a single copy can be set to link by default as users need to be able to install multiple PostgreSQL formulae to allow migrating DB to new version.

All other versions of PostgreSQL need to be manually linked.

At some point, the version for PostgreSQL that gets linked by default may change, but that depends on whenever someone creates a PR to do so (migrating all necessary formulae).

[ollietreend]

@willfaught @cho-m Annoyingly I'm experiencing a similar issue, also related to #167593.

I want to use PostgreSQL 16 with the PostGIS extension.

But there's only one postgis formula and it's hardcoded to postgresql@14 🤦🏻

homebrew-core/Formula/p/postgis.rb

Line 38 in d091ded

depends_on "postgresql@14"

So it seems that there's no way to use it with Postgres 16 (or any other version) using Homebrew 😢

[slifty]

I also find it strange that I can't have a single postgres installation that tracks with the major versions, and instead always need to specify a version. The broken out-of-the-box experience makes it all the more confusing.