undeniablyrob

If you’re looking to upgrade Postgres locally in a Rails project, it’s straight-forward-yet-not-simple. It’s not a one-click/one-command operation.

I used the pg_dump command, along with Homebrew in this example. I have also seen a good post from Christopher Brown and Keita on manually backing up and copying data files using pg_upgrade. These involve a few more steps that I personally did not need. YMMV, so these are solid alternatives if needed.

1. Backup your data.
   Run pg_dump for all databases that you’d like to backup:
   $ cd /your/project/root
$ pg_dump your-database-name > choose-a-backup-file-name
2. Upgrade your Postgres version.
   1. For Homebrew users:
      Verify the version you currently have installed:
      $ brew list --versions postgres or $ psql --version
$ brew update && brew upgrade postgres
3. Verify your Postgres upgrade.
   $ brew list --versions postgres or $ psql --version
4. Create your database(s).
   rake db:create
5. Restore your data.
   psql your-database-name < your-backup-file