---
title: "Building the Documentation with Make"
id: docguide-build
pg_version: "20devel"
---

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## J.3. Building the Documentation with Make

Once you have everything set up, change to the directory `doc/src/sgml` and run one of the commands described in the following subsections to build the documentation. (Remember to use GNU make.) 

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### J.3.1. HTML

To build the HTML version of the documentation: 
doc/src/sgml$ make html
 This is also the default target. The output appears in the subdirectory `html`. 

To produce HTML documentation with the stylesheet used on [postgresql.org](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/) instead of the default simple style use: 
doc/src/sgml$ make STYLE=website html
 

If the `STYLE=website` option is used, the generated HTML files include references to stylesheets hosted on [postgresql.org](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/) and require network access to view. 

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### J.3.2. Manpages

We use the DocBook XSL stylesheets to convert DocBook refentry pages to *roff output suitable for man pages. To create the man pages, use the command: 
doc/src/sgml$ make man
 

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### J.3.3. PDF

To produce a PDF rendition of the documentation using FOP, you can use one of the following commands, depending on the preferred paper format: 
-  For A4 format: 
doc/src/sgml$ make postgres-A4.pdf
 
-  For U.S. letter format: 
doc/src/sgml$ make postgres-US.pdf
 

 

Because the PostgreSQL documentation is fairly big, FOP will require a significant amount of memory. Because of that, on some systems, the build will fail with a memory-related error message. This can usually be fixed by configuring Java heap settings in the configuration file `~/.foprc`, for example: 
# FOP binary distribution
FOP_OPTS='-Xmx1500m'
# Debian
JAVA_ARGS='-Xmx1500m'
# Red Hat
ADDITIONAL_FLAGS='-Xmx1500m'
 There is a minimum amount of memory that is required, and to some extent more memory appears to make things a bit faster. On systems with very little memory (less than 1 GB), the build will either be very slow due to swapping or will not work at all. 

In its default configuration FOP will emit an `INFO` message for each page. The log level can be changed via `~/.foprc`: 
LOGCHOICE=-Dorg.apache.commons.logging.Log=​org.apache.commons.logging.impl.SimpleLog
LOGLEVEL=-Dorg.apache.commons.logging.simplelog.defaultlog=WARN
 

Other XSL-FO processors can also be used manually, but the automated build process only supports FOP. 

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### J.3.4. Syntax Check

Building the documentation can take very long. But there is a method to just check the correct syntax of the documentation files, which only takes a few seconds: 
doc/src/sgml$ make check