Docker can be used to quickly spin up a PostgreSQL instance with the extension installed. To do so, run docker run -d --name bioseqdb -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=password -p 5432:5432 unneon/bioseqdb. This will create and launch an instance in the background, to which you can connect using hostname localhost, port 5432, username postgres, password password and database postgres. The data volume is persistent across reboots, and the container can be started again using docker start bioseqdb.

To work on the extension, install Postgres (apt install postgresql postgresql-server-dev-all on Ubuntu, pacman -S postgresql on Arch) and CMake, and set up a Postgres instance (see Ubuntu docs or Arch docs). To compile and install bioinformatics libraries used by the extension, follow the instructions from relevant steps in the .github/workflows/ci.yml file.

To build and install the extension, create a build/ directory and run cmake .. from it. You can now build the extension by running the make command in the build directory, and install it with sudo make install. A typical development flow is running make && sudo make install && sudo systemctl restart postgresql. The entire process should take about a second.

After first installing the extension, you need to run CREATE EXTENSION bioseqdb; to load the extension to the active database. If you modify the definitions of any SQL functions or types, remember to drop any affected tables, DROP EXTENSION bioseqdb CASCADE; and repeat the CREATE EXTENSION command.