gyp Failing when Installing pg-native

Question

I'm trying to install the pg-native package:

sudo npm install pg-native

but the following error is generated:

> [email protected] install /Workspace/auth/node_modules/libpq
> node-gyp rebuild

/bin/sh: pg_config: command not found
gyp: Call to 'pg_config --libdir' returned exit status 127. while trying to load binding.gyp
gyp ERR! configure error 
gyp ERR! stack Error: `gyp` failed with exit code: 1
gyp ERR! stack     at ChildProcess.onCpExit (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/node-gyp/lib/configure.js:355:16)
gyp ERR! stack     at emitTwo (events.js:87:13)
gyp ERR! stack     at ChildProcess.emit (events.js:172:7)
gyp ERR! stack     at Process.ChildProcess._handle.onexit (internal/child_process.js:200:12)
gyp ERR! System Darwin 15.0.0
gyp ERR! command "/usr/local/Cellar/node/4.1.1/bin/node" "/usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/node-gyp/bin/node-gyp.js" "rebuild"
gyp ERR! cwd /Workspace/auth/node_modules/libpq
gyp ERR! node -v v4.1.1
gyp ERR! node-gyp -v v3.0.3
gyp ERR! not ok 
npm WARN install:libpq [email protected] install: `node-gyp rebuild`
npm WARN install:libpq Exit status 1

I've tried remedying this by installing the node-gyp module and then running the rebuild command manually:

sudo npm install -g node-gyp
sudo node-gyp rebuild

I read that this issue no longer persists in more current versions of Node, so I updated to version v4.1.1.

I've also tried a mix of installing the modules locally to the workspace and globally to the rest of the machine, but still no luck. Running node-gyp works, so it looks like that has been properly installed.

Any help on this issue would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

Not sure why I didn't think of this originally, but this was resolved by installing libpq on my local machine.

brew install postgresql

This bundle comes with libpq, which I didn't realize was needed at first, given the ambiguity in the error message.

It looked like it was either installed, or installing as a prerequisite since the first line in the error message identified a version number for this package, [email protected].