Question 213902 in Docker Question posted in
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Error when compiling libpq program in Docker: 'fatal error: libpq-fe.h: No such file or directory

I am trying to compile a C program that uses libpq library in a Docker container. Here’s my Dockerfile:

FROM ubuntu:latest

RUN apt-get update && 
    apt-get install -y build-essential libpq-dev

WORKDIR /app

# Copy the source files into the container's working directory
COPY tmp.c .

# Compile the source file directly in the Dockerfile
RUN gcc -Wall -Wextra -pedantic -g -o my_program tmp.c -lpq

CMD ["./my_program"]

When I try to build the Docker image using docker build . -t my_image, I get the following error:

tmp.c:4:10: fatal error: libpq-fe.h: No such file or directory
#include "libpq-fe.h"
         ^~~~~~~~~~~~
compilation terminated.

I have tried installing libpq-dev package, but it doesn’t seem to solve the issue. What am I missing here? How can I compile my program with libpq in the Docker container?

As a next step, I also want to test for memory leaks using Valgrind. Can you please advise me on how to do this after compiling the code?
I am using Mac for the purpose of analyzing the leakage, I have used leak but it wasn’t that much useful.

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2

Answers


  1. 0

    I have some suggestions may help:

    • Add explicit including to the PostgreSQL headers through –I/usr/include/postgresql tells the compiler to look in that directory for header files.
    • Skip the compiling line on the dockerfile and enter an interactive bash session and try to do that manually to figure out what is going on.
    • Try to remove -lpq and make sure it works without that flag, to be aware of the source of the problem (requires code modifications)

    I could able to have that running on my machine through adding
    –I/usr/include/postgresql in the gcc command

    RUN gcc -Wall -Wextra -pedantic -g -o my_program tmp.c -lpq  -I/usr/include/postgresql
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  2. 0

    I suggest you try to reinstall the libpq-dev package.

    sudo apt-get install --reinstall libpq-dev

    If it doesn’t work, another solution could be to use an alternative to Docker, like wsl.

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