How to find pg_config path

I recommend that you try to use Postgres.app. (http://postgresapp.com) This way you can easily turn Postgres on and off on your Mac. Once you do, add the path to Postgres to your .profile file by appending the following:

PATH="/Applications/Postgres.app/Contents/Versions/latest/bin:$PATH"

Only after you added Postgres to your path you can try to install psycopg2 either within a virtual environment (using pip) or into your global site packages.

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sudo find / -name "pg_config" -print

The answer is /Library/PostgreSQL/9.1/bin/pg_config in my configuration (MAC Maverick)

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Installing homebrew

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/gist/323731)"

And then installing postgresql

brew install postgresql

gave me this lovely bit of output:

checking for pg_config... yes

ahhh yeahhhhh

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Postgres.app was updated recently. Now it stores all the binaries in "Versions" folder

PATH="/Applications/Postgres.app/Contents/Versions/9.4/bin:$PATH"

Where 9.4 – version of PostgreSQL.

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Once you install the current PostgreSQL app on the MacOS X 10.11, this is where the pg_config file is /Library/PostgreSQL/9.5/bin/pg_config.

Then on the Terminal:

    $ export PG_HOME=/Library/PostgreSQL/9.5
    $ export PATH=$PATH:$PG_HOME/bin

This will put the path in the .profile of whatever terminal you are using.

In your environment (assuming you are using virtualenv) you then install psycopg2:

    $ pip install psycopg2

You should see if you had downloaded it before:

    Collecting psycopg2
      Using cached psycopg2-2.6.1.tar.gz
    Installing collected packages: psycopg2
      Running setup.py install for psycopg2 ... done
    Successfully installed psycopg2-2.6.1

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To summarize -- PostgreSQL installs its files (including its binary or executable files) in different locations, depending on the version number and the installation method.

Some of the possibilities:

/usr/local/bin/
/Library/PostgreSQL/9.2/bin/
/Applications/Postgres93.app/Contents/MacOS/bin/
/Applications/Postgres.app/Contents/Versions/9.3/bin/

No wonder people get confused!

Also, if your $PATH environment variable includes a path to the directory that includes an executable file (to confirm this, use echo $PATH on the command line) then you can run which pg_config, which psql, etc. to find out where the file is located.

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I had exactly the same error, but I installed postgreSQL through brew and re-run the original command and it worked perfectly :

brew install postgresql

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Have same issue on mac, you probably need to

brew install postgresql

then you can run

pip install psycopg2

The brew will fix PATH issue for you

this solution works for me at least.

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You can find the pg_config directory using its namesake:

$ pg_config --bindir
/usr/lib/postgresql/9.1/bin
$ 

Tested on Mac and Debian. The only wrinkle is that I can't see how to find the bindir for different versions of postgres installed on the same machine. It's fairly easy to guess though! :-)

Note: I updated my pg_config to 9.5 on Debian with:

sudo apt-get install postgresql-server-dev-9.5

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This is how to simply get the path of pg_config

$ which pg_config                 // prints the directory location 
/usr/bin/pg_config

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check /Library/PostgreSQL/9.3/bin and you should find pg_config

I.E. /Library/PostgreSQL/<version_num>/

ps: you can do the following if you deem it necessary for your pg needs -

create a .profile in your ~ directory

export PG_HOME=/Library/PostgreSQL/9.3
export PATH=$PATH:$PG_HOME/bin

You can now use psql or postgres commands from the terminal, and install psycopg2 or any other dependency without issues, plus you can always just ls $PG_HOME/bin when you feel like peeking at your pg_dir.

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I used :

export PATH=$PATH:/Library/PostgreSQL/9.6/bin

pip install psycopg2

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Works for me by installing the first the following pip packages: libpq-dev and postgresql-common

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For people looking for the pg_config path for postgresql installed via brew on Apple silicon: /opt/homebrew/Cellar/postgresql/<postgres_version>/bin.

For Intel based Mac system /usr/local/Cellar/postgresql/<postgres_version>/bin (Need to verify this).

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For those using macOS Big Sur and have their default shell as the Z shell, you can add the path to the py_config binary in the .zprofile which is equivalent to the .bash_profile as explained in this link https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208050

I had similar issues when using PyCharm with a virtual environment within which I was unable to change my shell to bash to get things going. Adding the postgres bin path fixed my issue:

MacBook-Pro ~ % cat .zprofile
# Setting PATH for Postgres
PATH="/Applications/Postgres.app/Contents/Versions/latest/bin:$PATH"
export PATH

Then running this worked without any issues:

pip install psycopg2

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path of pg_config in my case (MacOS)

/Library/PostgreSQL/13/bin

Execute the following in the terminal:

PATH="/Library/PostgreSQL/13/bin:$PATH"

Then

pip install psycopg2

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