celerp-postgres

PostgreSQL, pip installable. A full PostgreSQL distribution — the server and the client tools — delivered as a platform wheel. No apt/brew/installer, no Docker, no root, no compilation.

pip install celerp-postgres

That's the whole setup. You get unmodified PostgreSQL binaries on disk and a three-function API that tells you where they are. What you run with them is up to you.

Quickstart

Spin up a real PostgreSQL 17 database in a few lines — no drivers required beyond whatever you already use to talk to Postgres:

import subprocess, tempfile
from celerp_postgres import tool

data = tempfile.mkdtemp()

# One-time cluster init (no password prompts: local trust auth; libc collation
# keeps the package fully self-contained — ICU remains available per-collation)
subprocess.run([tool("initdb"), "-D", data, "-U", "postgres", "-A", "trust",
                "--locale-provider=libc"], check=True)

# Start on localhost:54321
subprocess.run([tool("pg_ctl"), "-D", data, "-w",
                "-o", "-c listen_addresses=127.0.0.1 -c port=54321",
                "-l", f"{data}/log", "start"], check=True)

# ... connect with psycopg / asyncpg / SQLAlchemy / anything:
#     postgresql://postgres@127.0.0.1:54321/postgres

subprocess.run([tool("pg_ctl"), "-D", data, "-w", "stop"], check=True)

On Linux/macOS you can skip TCP entirely and listen on a unix socket (-c listen_addresses='' -c unix_socket_directories=<dir>), which keeps the database invisible to the network.

What's in the box

Every wheel contains the complete distribution for its platform:

C headers (include/) are not shipped — this package runs PostgreSQL; it isn't a build-against-libpq SDK.

Supported platforms

Any CPython ≥ 3.9. Wheels only — there is deliberately no sdist, because a source install could not contain the binaries and would silently produce a broken package.

Every wheel is fully self-contained: the required shared libraries (openssl, icu, libxml2, compression codecs, …) ship inside the package, so it works on minimal images like python:slim and python:alpine with no system packages. A few niche server extensions that would drag in huge or host-specific dependencies (plpython3u, JIT/llvmjit, uuid-ossp, xml2) are not included.

API

Three symbols; that's the entire surface:

from celerp_postgres import POSTGRES_VERSION, bin_dir, tool, icu_data_dir

POSTGRES_VERSION   # "17.10.0" — the bundled PostgreSQL version (== package version)
bin_dir()          # ".../site-packages/celerp_postgres/pginstall/bin"
tool("pg_dump")    # full path to a tool; raises FileNotFoundError if absent
icu_data_dir()     # musl wheels only: set ICU_DATA to this when spawning the
                   # server (Alpine's ICU reads data from an external file);
                   # None on every other platform

No lifecycle magic, no hidden daemons, no atexit hooks. You own the process — which is exactly what makes this composable with whatever supervisor, test fixture, or app framework you already have.

Why you'd want this

• Test suites that need a real PostgreSQL without Docker, CI services, or a system install — pip install, boot per-session, throw away.
• Local-first / desktop apps that embed a private database next to the app's data directory instead of asking users to install a server.
• CLI tools and data scripts that need pg_dump/pg_restore/psql at a known, version-pinned path regardless of what the host has on PATH.
• Air-gapped and locked-down environments — everything arrives through pip's normal, hash-verifiable channel; nothing is downloaded at runtime.
• Teaching, notebooks, demos — a real database with zero setup instructions.

Versioning & updates

The package version is the PostgreSQL version (17.10.0 ships PostgreSQL 17.10). New PostgreSQL point releases are published as new package versions shortly after the upstream release train; pin >=17.10,<18 to receive security patches within the major you initialized your data directory with. Repackaging-only fixes use post releases (17.10.0.post1). PostgreSQL major upgrades change the on-disk pgdata format — moving 17 → 18 requires a pg_dump/pg_restore migration, as with any PostgreSQL installation.

How it's built (and why you can trust it)

Wheels repackage the excellent theseus-rs/postgresql-binaries release archives — the same binary source used across the Rust embedded-postgres ecosystem. Every archive's sha256 is pinned in this repository and verified at build time (never trusted from a live sidecar), the binaries are shipped unmodified, and every release is gated on CI that boots a real cluster on each platform and runs a pg_dump → pg_restore roundtrip before anything reaches PyPI. Publishing uses PyPI trusted publishing (OIDC) — no long-lived credentials exist.

License

• Package code (accessor module + build tooling): MIT.
• PostgreSQL binaries: PostgreSQL License — permissive, OSI-approved; the COPYRIGHT and upstream LICENSE notices ship inside the package at celerp_postgres/pginstall/.

Credits: the PostgreSQL Global Development Group, and theseus-rs for the portable builds.

Maintained by the Celerp team.