High Performance PostgreSQL for Rails: Suggest installing Postgres.app using Homebrew (page 7)

douglasshuang · 9 January 2026 13:17

Happy New Year! Just getting back into the book after a long pause and decided to restart from the beginning.

Postgres.app is available on Homebrew as the cask postgres-unofficial:

❯ brew info --cask postgres-unofficial
==> postgres-unofficial: 2.9.2,13-14-15-16-17-18 (auto_updates)
https://postgresapp.com/
Installed
/opt/homebrew/Caskroom/postgres-unofficial/2.9.2,13-14-15-16-17-18 (2.0GB)
  Installed using the formulae.brew.sh API on 2025-08-07 at 07:38:52
From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask/blob/HEAD/Casks/p/postgres-unofficial.rb
==> Name
Postgres
==> Description
App wrapper for Postgres
==> Artifacts
Postgres.app (App)
==> Analytics
install: 219 (30 days), 819 (90 days), 4,100 (365 days)

You might simplify the installation instructions a bit by adding it to sh/intro_brew_install_steps.sh.

Thank you!

Doug

andatki · 7 April 2026 19:39

Hi @douglasshuang That makes sense. I’d probably maintain a Dockerfile and docker-compose installation if I did it over again. However, if you’d like to make a shell script to install those dependencies as a PR, feel free to do so. It may make it easier for someone else to install the app dependencies on their Mac. GitHub - andyatkinson/rideshare: Rails app used in book 📚 "High Performance PostgreSQL for Rails" · GitHub

Thanks for reading the book and providing your feedback!