PostGIS has the following requirements for building and usage: A complete installation of PostgreSQL (including server headers). PostgreSQL is available from http://www.postgresql.org. Version 8.1 or higher is required. GNU C compiler (gcc). Some other ANSI C compilers can be used to compile PostGIS, but we find far fewer problems when compiling with gcc. GNU Make (gmake or make). For many systems, GNU make is the default version of make. Check the version by invoking make -v. Other versions of make may not process the PostGIS Makefile properly. Proj4 reprojection library. The Proj4 library is used to provide coordinate reprojection support within PostGIS. Proj4 is available for download from http://trac.osgeo.org/proj/. GEOS geometry library. The GEOS library is used to provide geometry tests (ST_Touches(), ST_Contains(), ST_Intersects()) and operations (ST_Buffer(), ST_Union(), ST_Difference()) within PostGIS. GEOS is available for download from http://trac.osgeo.org/geos/. (Recommended) Apache Ant (ant). Required for building any of the drivers under the java directory. Ant is available for download from http://ant.apache.org. The PostGIS module is an extension to the PostgreSQL backend server. As such, PostGIS &last_release_version; requires full PostgreSQL server headers access in order to compile. The PostgreSQL source code is available at http://www.postgresql.org. PostGIS &last_release_version; can be built against PostgreSQL versions 8.1.0 or higher. Earlier versions of PostgreSQL are not supported. Many OS systems now include pre-built packages for PostgreSQL/PostGIS. In many cases compilation is only necessary if you want the most bleeding edge versions or you are a package maintainer. If you would like to compile your own, more specific instructions for Windows Compiling Guide and others are available in PostGIS User Wiki Before you can compile the PostGIS server modules, you must compile and install the PostgreSQL package. For GEOS functionality you might need to explicitly link PostgreSQL against the standard C++ library: LDFLAGS=-lstdc++ ./configure [YOUR OPTIONS HERE] This is a workaround for bogus C++ exceptions interaction with older development tools. If you experience weird problems (backend unexpectedly closed or similar things) try this trick. This will require recompiling your PostgreSQL from scratch, of course. The steps that follow are for Linux users. They will not work on Windows or Mac For the below - if you are not logged in as root, you may need to use sudo or su commands to run the make make install commands Retrieve the PostGIS source archive from http://postgis.refractions.net/download/postgis-&last_release_version;.tar.gz. Uncompress and untar the archive. configure. All files are installed using information provided by pg_config Libraries are installed [pkglibdir]/lib/contrib. Important support files such as postgis.sql are installed in [prefix]/share/contrib. Loader and dumper binaries are installed in [bindir]/. wget http://postgis.refractions.net/download/postgis-&last_release_version;.tar.gz gzip -d -c postgis-&last_release_version;.tar.gz | tar xvf - cd postgis-&last_release_version;/ ./configure Make and Install PostgreSQL provides a utility called pg_config to enable extensions like PostGIS to locate the PostgreSQL installation directory. If ./configure didn't find pg_config, try using the --with-pgconfig=/path/to/pg_config switch to specify a particular PostgreSQL installation. Proj4 is now required in order to build and use PostGIS. If ./configure didn't find the Proj4 library, try using the --with-projdir=/path/to/projdir switch to specify an alternative Proj4 installation directory. If you have not compiled or installed Proj4, follow the instructions below if you wish to compile Proj4 from source. GEOS is now required in order to build and use PostGIS. If ./configure didn't find it, try using the --with-geosconfig=/path/to/geos-config switch to specify the full path to the geos-config program. If you have not compiled or installed Geos, follow the instructions that follow below to compile Geos from source. make clean && make make install ldconfig If you are missing proj based on above or running a version below 4.5, then install by following these steps. wget http://download.osgeo.org/proj/proj-&last_proj_release_version;.tar.gz gzip -d -c proj-&last_proj_release_version;.tar.gz | tar xvf - cd proj-&last_proj_release_version; ./configure && make clean && make make install ldconfig cd .. If you are missing geos based on above or running a version below 3.0, then install by following these steps. wget http://download.osgeo.org/geos/geos-&last_geos_release_version;.tar.bz2 bunzip2 -d -c geos-&last_geos_release_version;.tar.bz2 | tar xvf - cd geos-&last_geos_release_version; ./configure && make clean && make make install ldconfig cd .. PostGIS requires the PL/pgSQL procedural language extension. Before loading the postgis.sql file, you must first enable PL/pgSQL. You should use the createlang command. The PostgreSQL Programmer's Guide has the details if you want to this manually for some reason. # createlang plpgsql [yourdatabase] Now load the PostGIS object and function definitions into your database by loading the postgis.sql definitions file. # psql -d [yourdatabase] -f lwgeom/postgis.sql The PostGIS server extensions are now loaded and ready to use. For a complete set of EPSG coordinate system definition identifiers, you can also load the spatial_ref_sys.sql definitions file and populate the SPATIAL_REF_SYS table. # psql -d [yourdatabase] -f spatial_ref_sys.sql Some packaged distributions of PostGIS (in particular the Win32 installers for PostGIS >= 1.1.5) load the PostGIS functions into a template database called template_postgis. If the template_postgis database exists in your PostgreSQL installation then it is possible for users and/or applications to create spatially-enabled databases using a single command. Note that in both cases, the database user must have been granted the privilege to create new databases. From the shell: # createdb -T template_postgis my_spatial_db From SQL: postgres=# CREATE DATABASE my_spatial_db TEMPLATE=template_postgis Upgrading existing spatial databases can be tricky as it requires replacement or introduction of new PostGIS object definitions. Unfortunately not all definitions can be easily replaced in a live database, so sometimes your best bet is a dump/reload process. PostGIS provides a SOFT UPGRADE procedure for minor or bugfix releases, and an HARD UPGRADE procedure for major releases. Before attempting to upgrade postgis, it is always worth to backup your data. If you use the -Fc flag to pg_dump you will always be able to restore the dump with an HARD UPGRADE. Soft upgrade consists of sourcing the postgis_upgrade.sql script in your spatial database: $ psql -f postgis_upgrade.sql -d your_spatial_database If a soft upgrade is not possible the script will abort and you will be warned about HARD UPGRADE being required, so do not hesitate to try a soft upgrade first. If you can't find the postgis_upgrade.sql file you are probably using a version prior to 1.1 and must generate that file by yourself. This is done with the following command: $ utils/postgis_proc_upgrade.pl postgis.sql > postgis_upgrade.sql By HARD UPGRADE we intend full dump/reload of postgis-enabled databases. You need an HARD UPGRADE when postgis objects' internal storage changes or when SOFT UPGRADE is not possible. The Release Notes appendix reports for each version whether you need a dump/reload (HARD UPGRADE) to upgrade. PostGIS provides an utility script to restore a dump produced with the pg_dump -Fc command. It is experimental so redirecting its output to a file will help in case of problems. The procedure is as follow: Create a "custom-format" dump of the database you want to upgrade (let's call it "olddb") $ pg_dump -Fc olddb > olddb.dump Restore the dump contextually upgrading postgis into a new database. The new database doesn't have to exist. postgis_restore accepts createdb parameters after the dump file name, and that can for instance be used if you are using a non-default character encoding for your database. Let's call it "newdb", with UNICODE as the character encoding: $ sh utils/postgis_restore.pl postgis.sql newdb olddb.dump -E=UNICODE > restore.log Check that all restored dump objects really had to be restored from dump and do not conflict with the ones defined in postgis.sql $ grep ^KEEPING restore.log | less If upgrading from PostgreSQL < 8.0 to >= 8.0 you might want to drop the attrelid, varattnum and stats columns in the geometry_columns table, which are no-more needed. Keeping them won't hurt. DROPPING THEM WHEN REALLY NEEDED WILL DO HURT ! $ psql newdb -c "ALTER TABLE geometry_columns DROP attrelid" $ psql newdb -c "ALTER TABLE geometry_columns DROP varattnum" $ psql newdb -c "ALTER TABLE geometry_columns DROP stats" spatial_ref_sys table is restore from the dump, to ensure your custom additions are kept, but the distributed one might contain modification so you should backup your entries, drop the table and source the new one. If you did make additions we assume you know how to backup them before upgrading the table. Replace of it with the new one is done like this: $ psql newdb newdb=> drop spatial_ref_sys; DROP newdb=> \i spatial_ref_sys.sql There are several things to check when your installation or upgrade doesn't go as you expected. Check that you you have installed PostgreSQL 8.1 or newer, and that you are compiling against the same version of the PostgreSQL source as the version of PostgreSQL that is running. Mix-ups can occur when your (Linux) distribution has already installed PostgreSQL, or you have otherwise installed PostgreSQL before and forgotten about it. PostGIS will only work with PostgreSQL 8.1 or newer, and strange, unexpected error messages will result if you use an older version. To check the version of PostgreSQL which is running, connect to the database using psql and run this query: SELECT version(); If you are running an RPM based distribution, you can check for the existence of pre-installed packages using the rpm command as follows: rpm -qa | grep postgresql Also check that configure has correctly detected the location and version of PostgreSQL, the Proj4 library and the GEOS library. The output from configure is used to generate the postgis_config.h file. Check that the POSTGIS_PGSQL_VERSION, POSTGIS_PROJ_VERSION and POSTGIS_GEOS_VERSION variables have been set correctly. The JDBC extensions provide Java objects corresponding to the internal PostGIS types. These objects can be used to write Java clients which query the PostGIS database and draw or do calculations on the GIS data in PostGIS. Enter the java/jdbc sub-directory of the PostGIS distribution. Run the ant command. Copy the postgis.jar file to wherever you keep your java libraries. The JDBC extensions require a PostgreSQL JDBC driver to be present in the current CLASSPATH during the build process. If the PostgreSQL JDBC driver is located elsewhere, you may pass the location of the JDBC driver JAR separately using the -D parameter like this: # ant -Dclasspath=/path/to/postgresql-jdbc.jar PostgreSQL JDBC drivers can be downloaded from http://jdbc.postgresql.org. The data loader and dumper are built and installed automatically as part of the PostGIS build. To build and install them manually: # cd postgis-&last_release_version;/loader # make # make install The loader is called shp2pgsql and converts ESRI Shape files into SQL suitable for loading in PostGIS/PostgreSQL. The dumper is called pgsql2shp and converts PostGIS tables (or queries) into ESRI Shape files. For more verbose documentation, see the online help, and the manual pages.