This is part of the Semicolon&Sons Code Diary - consisting of lessons learned on the job. You're in the unix category.
Last Updated: 2025-10-30
When trying to build the Project B PHP container, I got the following error:
configure: error: Cannot find libpq-fe.h. Please specify correct PostgreSQL installation path
Generally speaking, what does one do in the face of .h errors when not working
directly in C?
The .h means libpq-fe.h is a header file. So assume it is missing C library
and probably called something like libpq). The first port of call is apt-get
install libpq therefore. (It goes without saying that you should scale your
due diligence about installing each package as justified by the
environment/project.)
In case that does not work, but there is often a parallel X-dev version of
libraries that is available. Here that would be libpq-dev and this was indeed
installable with apt-get install libpq-dev.
When dependencies complain about missing header files (X.h), try apt-get
install X or apt-get install x-dev.