It seems like there isn't any good reason the perl scripts for the MSVC build don't support readline
Readline for windows is available as part of the GnuWin32 project. http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/readline.htm It normally installs to "c:\Program Files\GnuWin32" I'd update the scripts myself, but I'm not a PERL programmer. >From what I can see, you'd add another line to config.pl for readline, and then add some stuff to mkvcbuild.pm for psql to do something like: if ($solution->{options}->{readline}) { $psql->AddIncludeDir($solution->{options}->{readline} . '\include'); $psql->AddLibrary($solution->{options}->{readline} . '\lib\readline.lib'); $psql->AddLibrary($solution->{options}->{readline} . '\lib\history.lib'); } And something to solution.pm in the part that builds pg_config.h that looks something like: if ($self->{options}->{readline}) { print O "#define HAVE_LIBREADLINE 1\n"; print O "#define HAVE_READLINE_READLINE_H 1\n"; print O "#define HAVE_READLINE_HISTORY_H 1\n"; print O "#define USE_READLINE 1\n"; print O "#define USE_READLINE_STATIC 1\n"; } (Not sure about the last line). I don't know if this is a good idea, but I would think this would make psql more "user-friendly" on windows. Perhaps someone who understands readline and perl better than me might want to take this on?