Quantum GIS

Before diving into trying to develop a plugin, I thought I would try to download and compile the most recent version of QGIS. I had some initial trouble compiling QGIS on an older Debian box because of some GDAL library conflicts with OpenEV. It was just a simple matter of modifying the makefiles but I was unable to find a way to resolve the conflict from the initial step using autogen.sh, so I chose to try a fresh install of Debian on another box. Additionally, libgeos-dev was initially missing and not explicitly mentioned in any of the build instructions for Linux, though references to GEOS are in the OSX and Windows build instructions. Once everything was in place the compilation went beautifully and with out a hitch.

So I thought I would share the steps I took for compiling QGIS on a fresh install of Debian Etch, testing release, just using packages and libraries downloaded and installed with apt-get.

1. Download the GUI installer iso from http://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/GUI and burn to CD. (For this install I used the mini.ios (Intelx86) image which is only 9.2 megabytes)
2. Boot from the CD.
3. Follow the instructions for installing the Debian Etch (testing release) desktop environment and standard system, which are the default components to be installed. **This is a network install and I would not recommend it for people with low bandwidth.
4. Login as a normal user and open a Terminal window.
5. In the Terminal window, become the superuser by typing:

   su root

6. Add your normal user to the sudoers list using:

   visudo

7. Exit from superuser account.
8. Install the necessary packages using the following commands;

   sudo apt-get install subversion automake1.9 libtool 
          libsqlite3-dev libgsl0-dev 
          sudo apt-get install postgresql 
          sudo apt-get install grass libgrass libgrass-dev libgeos-dev 
          sudo apt-get install gdal-bin libgdal1-1.3.1-dev 
          sudo apt-get install qt4-designer qt4-dev-tools

9. Update the system database

   sudo updatedb

10. Open a new Terminal window.
11. In the new terminal window, make a development directory for your normal user:

    mkdir devel

12. Enter the development directory and download the most recent version of QGIS

     
           cd devel
           svn co https://svn.qgis.org/repos/qgis/trunk/qgis qgis-unstable

13. Enter the source directory and run autgen.sh.

        
           cd qgis-unstable
           ./autogen.sh --with-qtdir=/usr/share/qt4 
                        --with-grass=/usr/lib/grass

14. If all of the packages are found simply type make to start compiling QGIS

     
    ==========================================
    qgis 0.8.0
    ------------------------------------------
    GDAL/OGR       : yes (Version 1.3.1)
    GEOS                :yes (Version 2.1.4)
    PostgreSQL       : yes (Version 8.1.0)
    GRASS             : yes
    SPIT                  : yes
    Georeferencer     : yes
    GPS/GPX           : yes
    PROJ4               : yes
    SQLITE3           : yes
    Python                : no
     
    Debug         : no
    Plugin dir    : ${exec_prefix}/lib/qgis
     
    The binary will be installed in /usr/bin
     
    The build is using Qt in /usr/share/qt4
    Linking with Qt using -lQtCore -lQt3Support -lQtGui -lQtNetwork -lQtSvg
    -lQtCore -lQt3Support -lQtGui -lQtNetwork -lQtXml -lQtSvg -lQtTest
    -lQtDesigner
    ------------------------------------------
    Configure finished, type 'make' to build.
     
    #make
     

15. Once the compilation is complete, install QGIS

     
           sudo make install

16. This is it!