title: Running a standalone postgres instance alongside existing servers
body: <p>I'm developing an application that heavily relies on Postgres. Currently, users are required to have Postgres set up and place database credentials in a config file that my app reads.</p>
  <p>There are a couple of issues with the approach which I am not entirely happy with:</p>
  <ul>
  <li>I can't dictate the version of Postgres to use (they may need a certain version for some other task)</li>
  <li>Users have to install a separate piece of software before they can use my application.</li>
  <li>They would need to provide database credentials to my app (which they may revoke later)</li>
  <li>Potentially issues with database name conflicts</li>
  </ul>
  <p>Is it possible to run a standalone version of Postgres i.e running it from a folder and potentially alongside another version of Postgres on the same machine?</p>
  <p>My current solution is to run it as a docker instance, this avoids any conflicts with data and permissions but does not solve the problem of needing users to install a separate piece of software first.</p>
  <p>The application is completely standalone and single user and there is never a need for a user to interact with the database directly, even actions like taking backups is handled by the app, which internally calls pg_dump</p>
  <p>(I would have thought something like this would be possible for the people who develop Postgres - I can't imagine they constantly install and remove the software completely from their system in order to test things.)</p>