til/postgres/set-up-a-project-local-cluster-with-postgres-app.md

Set Up A Project-Local Cluster With Postgres.app

I want to set up a PostgreSQL cluster in my project directory. This helps provide some separation and clarity that this cluster and its databases are just for this project.

This can be done with Postgres.app (on Mac) hitting the + button in the bottom left corner of the app. This will pop open a "Create new server" modal.

From there, you'll want to give the server a name that you can identify within Postgres.app. E.g. " Cluster"

Then select the Postgres version. My existing project is still on 17, so I'll select that.

The not so intuitive part is the Data Directory. Use the "Choose..." file picker to find the root directory of your project. Select that. Then click into the text input for the data directory and append the name of the data directory to be created to that path. If I want it to all go in postgres-data, then my path will look like:

/Users/me/dev/my-app/postgres-data

The postgres-data directory doesn't exist yet. But it will in a moment.

You probably want the default port, so leave that at 5432 unless you know otherwise.

Click Create server, though that won't actually create the server yet. Now with that server selected in Postgres.app click the Initialize button. That will create the postgres-data directory and then run initdb under the hood which will add everything your server needs. It will now be running at that port, ready to connect.