(This file does not appear in release tarballs.) In a release or snapshot tarball of PostgreSQL, documentation files named INSTALL and HISTORY will appear in this directory. However, these files are not stored in git and so will not be present if you are using a git checkout. If you are using git, you can view the most recent install instructions at: http://developer.postgresql.org/docs/postgres/installation.html and the current release notes at: http://developer.postgresql.org/docs/postgres/release.html Users compiling from git will also need compatible versions of Bison, Flex, and Perl, as discussed in the install documentation. These programs are not needed when using a tarball, since the files they are needed to build are already present in the tarball. (On Windows, however, you need Perl anyway.)