postgis Getting started with postgis Installation from Source (with Postgres 9.1 or higher)

Example

This guide is explicitly for PostgreSQL 9.1 or higher on linux machines. It uses the postgres extensions-feature that will greatly improve the import of extensions to an existing postgres-installation. If you have to work with an older version of postgres, please refer to the official documentations.

Resolve dependencies

PostGIS is a complex project that has a number of dependencies. In order to proceed with the manual configuration and build procedure, you will have to resolve these dependencies and install the following packages either manually or via the package-managers.

Minimum Requirements

• PostgreSQL 9.1 or higher. It is important, that you install the database including server headers, usually found in the dev-packages of the package-manager of your repository.
• The GNU C Compiler gcc.
• GNU make. To complete the build-process.
• Proj4. A projection library, for coordniate transformations.
• GEOS. A geometry library, that implements feature descriptions and simple geometries. Version 3.5 or highter is recommended in order to use newer functions such as ST_ClipByBox2D and ST_Subdivide.
• GDAL, version 1.9 or higher. A library that implements abstract data-formats for raster- and vector-based geospatial data.
• LibXML2, version 2.5 or higher. A libraray to work with XML, XSLT and DTD.
• JSON-C, version 0.9 or higher. A library to create output in the JSON-format

Optional Requirements

• GTK (requires GTK+2.0, 2.8+) to compile the shp2pgsql-gui.
• SFCGAL, version 1.1 (or higher) could be used to provide additional 2D and 3D advanced analysis functions to PostGIS.
• PCRE. A library for regular expression pattern matching using the Perl 5 syntax. This library is needed if you want to work with the Adress Standardizer.
• CUnit. A unit-testing utility, needed for regression testing.
• DocBook (xsltproc) is required for building the documentation.
• DBLatex is required for building the documentation in PDF format.
• ImageMagick is required to generate the images used in the documentation.

Get the Sources

In order to get the source code, download the latest tarball:

wget http://postgis.net/stuff/postgis-2.3.2dev.tar.gz
tar -xvzf postgis-2.3.2dev.tar.gz

or use the official SVN-repository:

svn checkout http://svn.osgeo.org/postgis/trunk/ postgis-2.3.2dev

Configuration

If you obtained the sources via SVN, you can prepare the config-script with:

./autogen.sh

In order to configure the build-process for your specific machine, run in the project folder:

./configure

There are several optional parameters for the configuration-step. Please refer to the official documentation for detailed instructions, this is usually optional and only for servers that use non-default installations.

Build

Once the configuration-step has finished successfully, a makefile will be created. To start the build-process run:

make

The last output should be:

"PostGIS was built successfully. Ready to install."

As of version 1.4.0, all the functions have comments generated from the documentation. If you wish to install these comments into your spatial databases later, run the command which requires docbook.

make comments

Installation

Install all extensions with:

make install

The PostGIS extensions are built and installed automatically if you are using PostgreSQL 9.1 or higher. You can install the necessary extensions manually, if you have different setup.

In the project folder:

cd extensions
cd postgis
make clean
make
make install

cd ..
cd postgis_topology
make clean
make
make install

cd ..
cd postgis_sfcgal
make clean
make
make install

cd ..
cd address_standardizer
make clean
make
make install
make installcheck

cd ..
cd postgis_tiger_geocoder
make clean
make
make install
make installcheck

If you want to install the extensions manually on a different machine, copy the following files from the extensions folder into the PostgreSQL/share/extension-folder of the target. For each extension:

scp extensions/[EXTENSION]/sql/*.sql user@target:[POSTGIS_PATH]/share/extension

where [EXTENSION] is the selected extension (postgis, postgis_topology, postgis_sfcgal, address_standardizer, postgis_tiger_geocoder) and [POSTGIS_PATH] is the PostGIS installation-path on your target-machine.

Verifiying the Installation

If you don't have a running postgres database service, setup your postgres database first. Connect to the database, using:

su postgres -c psql

To verify that the extensions are accessible, run the following queries in a psql-session:

SELECT name, default_version,installed_version FROM pg_available_extensions WHERE name LIKE 'postgis%' or name LIKE 'address%';

The output should look like this:

             name             | default_version | installed_version
------------------------------+-----------------+-------------------
 address_standardizer         | 2.3.2dev        | 2.3.2dev
 address_standardizer_data_us | 2.3.2dev        | 2.3.2dev
 postgis                      | 2.3.2dev        | 2.3.2dev
 postgis_sfcgal               | 2.3.2dev        |
 postgis_tiger_geocoder       | 2.3.2dev        | 2.3.2dev
 postgis_topology             | 2.3.2dev        |

(6 rows)

To perform an in-depth post-installation test, run the following command in your project-folder:

make check

This will run through various checks and tests using the generated library against an actual PostgreSQL database.