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Installing PostGIS from Source

By Ruohang Feng In PGSQL 608 words 3 min
Ruohang FengPigsty founder, PostgreSQL mage, database guru, cloud-exit evangelist

Strongly recommend using yum / apt commands to install PostGIS from official PostgreSQL binary repositories.

Reference: http://www.postgresonline.com/journal/archives/362-An-almost-idiots-guide-to-install-PostgreSQL-9.5,-PostGIS-2.2-and-pgRouting-2.1.0-with-Yum.html

1. Installation Environment

  • CentOS 7
  • PostgreSQL10
  • PostGIS2.4
  • PGROUTING2.5.2

2. PostgreSQL10 Installation

2.1 Determine System Environment
$ uname -a

Linux localhost.localdomain 3.10.0-693.el7.x86_64 #1 SMP Tue Aug 22 21:09:27 UTC 2017 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
2.2 Install Correct RPM Package
rpm -ivh https://download.postgresql.org/pub/repos/yum/10/redhat/rhel-7-x86_64/pgdg-centos10-10-2.noarch.rpm

Different systems use different RPM sources. You can get the appropriate platform links from http://yum.postgresql.org/repopackages.php.

2.3 Check if RPM Package is Correctly Installed
yum list | grep pgdg

pgdg-centos10.noarch                        10-2                       installed
CGAL.x86_64                                 4.7-1.rhel7                pgdg10
CGAL-debuginfo.x86_64                       4.7-1.rhel7                pgdg10
CGAL-demos-source.x86_64                    4.7-1.rhel7                pgdg10
CGAL-devel.x86_64                           4.7-1.rhel7                pgdg10
MigrationWizard.noarch                      1.1-3.rhel7                pgdg10
...
2.4 Install PostgreSQL
yum install -y postgresql10 postgresql10-server postgresql10-libs postgresql10-contrib postgresql10-devel

You can choose to install the appropriate RPM packages based on your needs.

2.5 Start Service

By default, PostgreSQL installation directory is /usr/pgsql-10/, data directory is /var/lib/pgsql/, and the system creates a default user postgres.

passwd postgres # Set password for system postgres user
su - postgres   # Switch to postgres user
/usr/pgsql-10/bin/initdb -D /var/lib/pgsql/10/data/	# Initialize database
/usr/pgsql-10/bin/pg_ctl -D /var/lib/pgsql/10/data/ -l logfile start	# Start database
/usr/pgsql-10/bin/psql postgres postgres	# Login

3. PostGIS Installation

yum install postgis24_10-client postgis24_10

If you encounter errors like:

--> Finished Dependency Resolution
Error: Package: postgis24_10-client-2.4.2-1.rhel7.x86_64 (pgdg10)
          Requires: libproj.so.0()(64bit)
Error: Package: postgis24_10-2.4.2-1.rhel7.x86_64 (pgdg10)
          Requires: gdal-libs >= 1.9.0

You can try to resolve it with: yum -y install epel-release

4. FDW Installation

yum install ogr_fdw10

5. pgRouting Installation

yum install pgrouting_10

6. Verification Testing

# After logging into PostgreSQL, execute the following commands. Success if no errors:
CREATE EXTENSION postgis;
CREATE EXTENSION postgis_topology;
CREATE EXTENSION ogr_fdw;

SELECT postgis_full_version();

Compilation Tools

These tools are generally included with the system.

  • GCC and G++, version at least 4.x.
  • GNU Make, CMake, Autotools
  • Git

On CentOS, install directly with sudo yum install gcc gcc-c++ git autoconf automake libtool m4.

Required Dependencies

PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL is the host platform for PostGIS. Here we use 10.1 as an example.

GEOS

GEOS is the abbreviation for Geometry Engine, Open-Source, a C++ version of the geometry library and PostGIS’s core dependency.

PostGIS 2.4 uses some new features from GEOS 3.7. However, as of now, the latest version officially released by GEOS is 3.6.2. GEOS version 3.7 can be obtained through Nightly snapshot. So currently, if you want to use all new features, you need to compile and install GEOS 3.7 from source.

# Rolling daily updates, this URL may expire, check here http://geos.osgeo.org/snapshots/
wget -P ./ http://geos.osgeo.org/snapshots/geos-20171211.tar.bz2
tar -jxf geos-20171211.tar.bz2
cd geos-20171211
./configure
make
sudo make install
cd ..

Proj

Provides coordinate projection support for PostGIS. Current latest version is 4.9.3: Download

# This URL may expire, check here http://proj4.org/download.html
wget -P . http://download.osgeo.org/proj/proj-4.9.3.tar.gz
tar -zxf proj-4.9.3.tar.gz
cd proj-4.9.3
make 
sudo make install

JSON-C

Currently used for importing GeoJSON format data. The ST_GeomFromGeoJson function uses this library.

Compiling json-c requires autoconf, automake, libtool.

git clone https://github.com/json-c/json-c
cd json-c
sh autogen.sh

./configure  # --enable-threading
make
make install

LibXML2

Currently used for importing GML and KML format data. Functions ST_GeomFromGML and ST_GeomFromKML depend on this library.

Currently available from this download server. Current version used is 2.9.7.

tar -zxf libxml2-sources-2.9.7.tar.gz
cd libxml2-sources-2.9.7
./configure
make 
sudo make install

GDAL

wget -P . http://download.osgeo.org/gdal/2.2.3/gdal-2.2.3.tar.gz

SFCGAL

SFCGAL is an extended wrapper for CGAL. Although it’s optional, many functions are commonly used, so installation is needed here. Download page

SFCGAL has many dependencies, including CMake, CGAL, Boost, MPFR, GMP, etc. Among these, CGAL was manually installed above. Here we still need to manually install BOOST.

wget -P . https://github.com/Oslandia/SFCGAL/archive/v1.3.0.tar.gz

Boost

Boost is a common C++ library that SFCGAL depends on. Download page

wget -P . https://dl.bintray.com/boostorg/release/1.65.1/source/boost_1_65_1.tar.gz
tar -zxf boost_1_65_1.tar.gz
cd boost_1_65_1
./bootstrap.sh
./b2
Last modified 2017-09-07