Postgres and GitHub Codespaces
This morning I wanted to see if I could get a more convenient method of getting to the attached Docker postgres server on GitHub Codespaces. The defaults of localhost, on port 5432 are standard, but if the machine can do unix sockets, then that's the preferred default. So there's the rub - the Codespaces images are Ubuntu, but they aren't set up for that - Docker maintaining the independent images and mounts for data. So I had to try something different.
I had previously tried using the pgpass file, but while that was easy to set up, it wasn't assuming precedence over the unix sockets... so that was a bust. The next thing I tried was to use the environment variables: PGHOST, PGPORT, PGUSER - and once I set those:
$ export PGHOST=localhost $ export PGPORT=5432 $ export PGUSER=postgres
then I could use:
$ psql postgres
and other postgres commands like:
$ createdb advent
to make a new database that I could reach with:
$ psql advent
This is exactly what I was looking for! At this point, I could use the Codespaces for all the kind of development I was looking to do. Just fantastic! 🙂
I then updated the .bashrc and .zshrc files in my dotfiles repo so that any new Codespaces I would make have these baked in. I just need to get the Codespaces support directory into each project, and that will spin up just exactly what I need. Very nice indeed.