This chapter details the steps required to install PostGIS. The raster support is currently optional, but in final release it will be required. All the .sql files once installed will be installed in share/contrib/postgis-&last_release_version; folder of your PostgreSQL install The postgis_comments.sql, raster_comments.sql, topology_comments.sql generate quick help tips for each function that can be accessed via pgAdmin III or psql. In psql with a command of the form e.g.\dd ST_SetPoint tar xvfz postgis-&last_release_version;.tar.gz cd postgis-&last_release_version; ./configure --with-raster --with-topology --with-gui make make install createdb yourdatabase createlang plpgsql yourdatabase psql -d yourdatabase -f postgis.sql psql -d yourdatabase -f postgis_comments.sql psql -d yourdatabase -f spatial_ref_sys.sql psql -d yourdatabase -f rtpostgis.sql psql -d yourdatabase -f raster_comments.sql psql -d yourdatabase -f topology/topology.sql psql -d yourdatabase -f doc/topology_comments.sql topology_comments.sql since its an optional feature is not installed by make install or make comments install. However if you do a make comments or make topology_comments.sql, it will be generated in the docs folder The rest of this chapter goes into detail each of the above installation steps. PostGIS has the following requirements for building and usage: Required PostgreSQL &min_postgres_version; or higher. A complete installation of PostgreSQL (including server headers) is required. PostgreSQL is available from http://www.postgresql.org . For a full PostgreSQL / PostGIS support matrix and PostGIS/GEOS support matrix refer to http://trac.osgeo.org/postgis/wiki/UsersWikiPostgreSQLPostGIS 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, version 4.6.0 or greater. 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, version 3.2.2 or greater, but GEOS 3.3 is recommended. Without GEOS 3.3, you will be missing some major enhancements with handling of topological exceptions and improvements to geometry validation and making geometries valid such as ST_ValidDetail and ST_MakeValid. GEOS is available for download from http://trac.osgeo.org/geos/ . LibXML2, version 2.5.x or higher. LibXML2 is currently used in some imports functions (ST_GeomFromGML and ST_GeomFromKML). LibXML2 is available for download from http://xmlsoft.org/downloads.html. GDAL, version 1.6 or higher. This is needed for raster support and will be required in final release of PostGIS 2.0. http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/wiki/DownloadSource. Optional GTK (requires GTK+2.0) to compile the shp2pgsql-gui shape file loader. http://www.gtk.org/ . Apache Ant (ant) is required for building any of the drivers under the java directory. Ant is available from http://ant.apache.org . DocBook (xsltproc) is required for building the documentation. Docbook is available from http://www.docbook.org/ . DBLatex (dblatex) is required for building the documentation in PDF format. DBLatex is available from http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/ . ImageMagick (convert) is required to generate the images used in the documentation. ImageMagick is available from http://www.imagemagick.org/ . Retrieve the PostGIS source archive from the downloads website http://www.postgis.org/download/postgis-&last_release_version;.tar.gz wget http://www.postgis.org/download/postgis-&last_release_version;.tar.gz tar -xvzf postgis-&last_release_version;.tar.gz This will create a directory called postgis-&last_release_version; in the current working directory. Alternatively, checkout the source from the svn repository http://svn.osgeo.org/postgis/trunk/ . svn checkout http://svn.osgeo.org/postgis/trunk/ postgis-&last_release_version; Change into the newly created postgis-&last_release_version; directory to continue the installation. 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. 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. It can be built against PostgreSQL versions &min_postgres_version; or higher. Earlier versions of PostgreSQL are not supported. Refer to the PostgreSQL installation guides if you haven't already installed PostgreSQL. http://www.postgresql.org . For GEOS functionality, when you install PostgresSQL you may 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 following steps outline the configuration and compilation of the PostGIS source. They are written for Linux users and will not work on Windows or Mac. As with most linux installations, the first step is to generate the Makefile that will be used to build the source code. This is done by running the shell script ./configure With no additional parameters, this command will attempt to automatically locate the required components and libraries needed to build the PostGIS source code on your system. Although this is the most common usage of ./configure, the script accepts several parameters for those who have the required libraries and programs in non-standard locations. The following list shows only the most commonly used parameters. For a complete list, use the --help or --help=short parameters. --prefix=PREFIX This is the location the PostGIS libraries and SQL scripts will be installed to. By default, this location is the same as the detected PostgreSQL installation. This parameter is currently broken, as the package will only install into the PostgreSQL installation directory. Visit http://trac.osgeo.org/postgis/ticket/160 to track this bug. --with-pgconfig=FILE PostgreSQL provides a utility called pg_config to enable extensions like PostGIS to locate the PostgreSQL installation directory. Use this parameter (--with-pgconfig=/path/to/pg_config) to manually specify a particular PostgreSQL installation that PostGIS will build against. --with-gdalconfig=FILE GDAL, a required library, provides functionality needed for raster support gdal-config to enable software installations to locate the GDAL installation directory. Use this parameter (--with-gdalconfig=/path/to/gdal-config) to manually specify a particular GDAL installation that PostGIS will build against. --with-geosconfig=FILE GEOS, a required geometry library, provides a utility called geos-config to enable software installations to locate the GEOS installation directory. Use this parameter (--with-geosconfig=/path/to/geos-config) to manually specify a particular GEOS installation that PostGIS will build against. --with-projdir=DIR Proj4 is a reprojection library required by PostGIS. Use this parameter (--with-projdir=/path/to/projdir) to manually specify a particular Proj4 installation directory that PostGIS will build against. --with-gui Compile the data import GUI (requires GTK+2.0). This will create shp2pgsql-gui graphical interface to shp2pgsql. --with-raster Compile with raster support. This will build rtpostgis-&last_release_version; library and rtpostgis.sql file. This may not be required in final release as plan is to build in raster support by default. --with-topology Compile with topology support. This will build the topology.sql file. There is no corresponding library as all logic needed for topology is in postgis-&last_release_version; library. If you obtained PostGIS from the SVN repository , the first step is really to run the script ./autogen.sh This script will generate the configure script that in turn is used to customize the installation of PostGIS. If you instead obtained PostGIS as a tarball, running ./autogen.sh is not necessary as configure has already been generated. Once the Makefile has been generated, building PostGIS is as simple as running make The last line of the output should be "PostGIS was built successfully. Ready to install." As of PostGIS v1.4.0, 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. The postgis_comments.sql is also packaged in the tar.gz distribution in the doc folder so no need to make comments if installing from the tar ball. make comments If you wish to test the PostGIS build, run make check The above command will run through various checks and regression tests using the generated library against an actual PostgreSQL database. If you configured PostGIS using non-standard PostgreSQL, GEOS, or Proj4 locations, you may need to add their library locations to the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. Currently, the make check relies on the PATH and PGPORT environment variables when performing the checks - it does not use the PostgreSQL version that may have been specified using the configuration parameter --with-pgconfig. So make sure to modify your PATH to match the detected PostgreSQL installation during configuration or be prepared to deal with the impending headaches. Visit http://trac.osgeo.org/postgis/ticket/186 to track this bug. If successful, the output of the test should be similar to the following: CUnit - A Unit testing framework for C - Version 2.1-0 http://cunit.sourceforge.net/ Suite: print_suite Test: test_lwprint_default_format ... passed Test: test_lwprint_format_orders ... passed Test: test_lwprint_optional_format ... passed Test: test_lwprint_oddball_formats ... passed Test: test_lwprint_bad_formats ... passed Suite: Misc Suite Test: test_misc_force_2d ... passed Test: test_misc_simplify ... passed Test: test_misc_count_vertices ... passed Test: test_misc_area ... passed Test: test_misc_wkb ... passed Suite: PointArray Suite Test: test_ptarray_append_point ... passed Test: test_ptarray_append_ptarray ... passed Suite: PostGIS Computational Geometry Suite Test: test_lw_segment_side ... passed Test: test_lw_segment_intersects ... passed Test: test_lwline_crossing_short_lines ... passed Test: test_lwline_crossing_long_lines ... passed Test: test_lwline_crossing_bugs ... passed Test: test_lwpoint_set_ordinate ... passed Test: test_lwpoint_get_ordinate ... passed Test: test_lwpoint_interpolate ... passed Test: test_lwline_clip ... passed Test: test_lwline_clip_big ... passed Test: test_lwmline_clip ... passed Test: test_geohash_point ... passed Test: test_geohash_precision ... passed Test: test_geohash ... passed Test: test_isclosed ... passed Suite: PostGIS Measures Suite Test: test_mindistance2d_tolerance ... passed Test: test_rect_tree_contains_point ... passed Test: test_rect_tree_intersects_tree ... passed Test: test_lwgeom_segmentize2d ... passed Suite: WKT Out Suite Test: test_wkt_out_point ... passed Test: test_wkt_out_linestring ... passed Test: test_wkt_out_polygon ... passed Test: test_wkt_out_multipoint ... passed Test: test_wkt_out_multilinestring ... passed : : --Run Summary: Type Total Ran Passed Failed suites 17 17 n/a 0 tests 143 143 143 0 asserts 1228 1228 1228 0 Creating spatial db postgis_reg Postgis 2.0.0SVN - 2011-01-11 15:33:37 GEOS: 3.3.0-CAPI-1.7.0 PROJ: Rel. 4.6.1, 21 August 2008 Running tests loader/Point.............. ok loader/PointM.............. ok loader/PointZ.............. ok loader/MultiPoint.............. ok loader/MultiPointM.............. ok loader/MultiPointZ.............. ok loader/Arc.............. ok loader/ArcM.............. ok loader/ArcZ.......... ok loader/Polygon.............. ok loader/PolygonM.............. ok loader/PolygonZ.............. ok regress. ok regress_index. ok regress_index_nulls. ok lwgeom_regress. ok regress_lrs. ok removepoint. ok setpoint. ok simplify. ok snaptogrid. ok affine. ok measures. ok long_xact. ok ctors. ok sql-mm-serialize. ok sql-mm-circularstring. ok sql-mm-compoundcurve. ok sql-mm-curvepoly. ok sql-mm-general. ok sql-mm-multicurve. ok sql-mm-multisurface. ok polyhedralsurface. ok out_geometry. ok out_geography. ok in_gml. ok in_kml. ok iscollection. ok regress_ogc. ok regress_ogc_cover. ok regress_ogc_prep. ok regress_bdpoly. ok regress_proj. ok dump. ok dumppoints. ok wmsservers_new. ok tickets. ok remove_repeated_points. ok split. ok relatematch. ok regress_buffer_params. ok hausdorff. ok clean. ok sharedpaths. ok snap. ok Run tests: 55 Failed: 0 To install PostGIS, type make install This will copy the PostGIS installation files into their appropriate subdirectory specified by the --prefix configuration parameter. In particular: The loader and dumper binaries are installed in [prefix]/bin. The SQL files, such as postgis.sql, are installed in [prefix]/share/contrib. The PostGIS libraries are installed in [prefix]/lib. If you previously ran the make comments command to generate the postgis_comments.sql, raster_comments.sql file, install the sql file by running make comments-install postgis_comments.sql and raster_comments.sql was separated from the typical build and installation targets since with it comes the extra dependency of xsltproc. The first step in creating a PostGIS database is to create a simple PostgreSQL database. createdb [yourdatabase] Many of the PostGIS functions are written in the PL/pgSQL procedural language. As such, the next step to create a PostGIS database is to enable the PL/pgSQL language in your new database. This is accomplish by the command createlang plpgsql [yourdatabase] Now load the PostGIS object and function definitions into your database by loading the postgis.sql definitions file (located in [prefix]/share/contrib as specified during the configuration step). psql -d [yourdatabase] -f postgis.sql 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. This will permit you to perform ST_Transform() operations on geometries. psql -d [yourdatabase] -f spatial_ref_sys.sql If you wish to add comments to the PostGIS functions, the final step is to load the postgis_comments.sql into your spatial database. The comments can be viewed by simply typing \dd [function_name] from a psql terminal window. psql -d [yourdatabase] -f postgis_comments.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. After compiling you should find several postgis_upgrade*.sql files. Install the one for your version of PostGIS. For example postgis_upgrade_13_to_15.sql should be used if you are upgrading from PostGIS 1.3 to 1.5. $ psql -f postgis_upgrade_13_to_15.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 files 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=> truncate 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 &min_postgres_version; 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 &min_postgres_version; 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.