I've been using postgres as a local database for one of my personal projects, a GUI app or to run python tests that depend on it without having to rely on installing it in my environment.

I created a Python package that downloads an embedded Postgres binary, sets up the database, and gives you a database URL: https://github.com/kketch/tinypg

It downloads pg binaries from this project: https://github.com/zonkyio/embedded-postgres-binaries. There are other similar projects listed on that page that provide this for Java, Go, Rust and Node

When not using python, been using this script to create ephemeral postgres databases for tests but also persistent one in my dev containers: https://github.com/eradman/ephemeralpg

I've wrapped it with yet another shell script to make it usable just like this:

`export DB_URL=$(./pgtest.sh)`

This version (pgtest.sh), just creates a disposable ephemeral postgres: https://gist.github.com/kketch/d4e19a7fb6ebc1cfc265af44c1b41...

This version (pgdev.sh), starts a postgres instance (if not already running) and persists the DB. Also supports seeding it with a SQL script (dev_seed.sql): https://gist.github.com/kketch/88bb5b766994e247a9f2c37f13306...