Compile and Install Ubuntu

Quick instructions

These instructions should work fine on Ubuntu distributions:

Install geospatial dependencies

1. Install some dependencies (PROJ, GEOS, GDAL libraries) and the compiler tools
(note: you need Python 3)

# be sure to have an updated system
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

# install PROJ
sudo apt install libproj-dev proj-data proj-bin unzip -y

# optionally, install (selected) datum grid files
sudo apt-get install proj-data

# install GEOS
sudo apt install libgeos-dev -y

# install GDAL
sudo apt install libgdal-dev python3-gdal gdal-bin -y

# install PDAL (optional)
sudo apt install libpdal-dev pdal -y

# Python3 precedence over Python2 (which is end-of-life since 2019, so it should be the default anyway)
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/python python /usr/bin/python3 1

Install compiler stuff and further dependencies. Note: this is a single command, please copy-paste it entirely into the terminal:

Install further compilation dependencies (Ubuntu 22.04)

For Ubuntu 22.04:

 sudo apt-get install \
  build-essential \
  flex make bison gcc libgcc1 g++ ccache \
  python3 python3-dev python3-pip \
  python3-opengl python3-wxgtk4.0 \
  python3-dateutil libgsl-dev python3-numpy \
  wx3.0-headers wx-common libwxgtk3.0-gtk3-dev \
  libwxbase3.0-dev   \
  libncurses5-dev \
  libbz2-dev \
  zlib1g-dev gettext \
  libtiff5-dev libpnglite-dev \
  libcairo2 libcairo2-dev \
  sqlite3 libsqlite3-dev \
  libpdal-dev libpq-dev \
  libreadline-dev libfreetype6-dev \
  libfftw3-3 libfftw3-dev \
  libboost-thread-dev libboost-program-options-dev \
  git libzstd-dev \
  checkinstall \
  libglu1-mesa-dev libxmu-dev \
  ghostscript wget -y

For NVIZ on Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install \
  ffmpeg libavutil-dev ffmpeg2theora \
  libffmpegthumbnailer-dev \
  libavcodec-dev \
  libxmu-dev \
  libavformat-dev libswscale-dev -y

Update wxpython:

# be sure to pick the correct Ubuntu version
pip3 install -U -f https://extras.wxpython.org/wxPython4/extras/linux/gtk3/ubuntu-22.04 wxPython

Source code download

Now we have all "ingredients" readily installed on our system.

Source code download:

There a two ways of getting the source code: either use a) the weekly snapshot (cannot be updated, or b) the source code from the GitHub repository (you can update your local copy easily in future):

a) Download of the weekly source code snapshot (not recommended):

# download latest GRASS GIS 8.x stable release source code:
mkdir $HOME/src/
cd  $HOME/src/
wget https://grass.osgeo.org/grass84/source/snapshot/grass-8.4.git_src_snapshot_latest.tar.gz

# Unpack source code package and remove tarball archive:
tar xvfz grass-8.4.git_src_snapshot_latest.tar.gz
rm -f grass-8.4.git_src_snapshot_latest.tar.gz 

# rename source code directory (yes, with the questionmarks!)
mv grass-8.4.git_src_snapshot_20??_??_?? grass-8.4.latest
cd grass-8.4.latest/

b) Download of the current development version from GitHub (adopt the path below accordingly)

Note: to find the current version number (8_x), see https://github.com/OSGeo/grass/branches:

sudo apt-get install git
git clone https://github.com/OSGeo/grass.git grass-8.4.latest.git
cd grass-8.4.latest.git/
git checkout releasebranch_8_4

Compilation

Now we can compile the source code in order to generate the GRASS GIS binaries:

# "configure" source code for local machine (checks for CPU type etc):
MYCFLAGS='-O2 -fPIC -fno-common -fexceptions -std=gnu99 -fstack-protector -m64'
#MYCXXFLAGS=''
MYLDFLAGS='-Wl,--no-undefined -Wl,-z,now'

LDFLAGS="$MYLDFLAGS" CFLAGS="$MYCFLAGS" CXXFLAGS="$MYCXXFLAGS" ./configure \
  --with-cxx \
  --enable-largefile \
  --with-proj --with-proj-share=/usr/share/proj \
  --with-gdal=/usr/bin/gdal-config \
  --with-python \
  --with-geos \
  --with-sqlite \
  --with-nls \
  --with-zstd \
  --with-pdal \
  --with-cairo --with-cairo-ldflags=-lfontconfig \
  --with-freetype=yes --with-freetype-includes="/usr/include/freetype2/" \
  --with-wxwidgets \
  --with-fftw \
  --with-openmp \
  --with-opengl-libs=/usr/include/GL \
  --with-postgres=yes --with-postgres-includes="/usr/include/postgresql" \
  --without-netcdf \
  --without-mysql \
  --without-odbc \
  --without-ffmpeg

Now compile the source code (this will take some time as it generates binary code from the source code):

# note: the more CPUs you have, the higher the -j number may be set to
# here: build using 4 CPU cores
make -j4

Installation

Install resulting GRASS GIS binaries into /usr/local/:

sudo make install

Start GRASS GIS in the terminal:

grass

Done & enjoy!

Hints

• Usually, the installation of compiled code is done by using the make tool. Alternatively, this can be done by using the checkinstall tool (i.e., sudo checkinstall instead of sudo make install) which eases off removal of packages. If checkinstall fails to deliver, please note some related bugs: 78455 and 599163. Useful information on using checkinstall: Compiling things on Ubuntu the Easy Way.

• In multi-core processors, the compilation performance can be boosted by using -j switches (e.g. make -j2 or make -j3 or even make -j4) which specify the number of jobs (commands) to run simultaneously.

Pre-compiled packages and backports

Pre-compiled packages and backports are available from UbuntuGIS via their ppa.launchpad stable and ppa.launchpad unstable repositories. This is by far the simplest and fastest solution. Please prefer it over the manual way of compiling source code yourself as described below.

Version overview:

• noble 8.3
• jammy (22.04): 8.3
• focal (20.04 LTS): 8.2
• bionic (18.04 LTS): 7.8
• xenial (16.04 LTS): 7.6
• trusty (14.04 LTS): 7.4

a) Daily ready-to-install GRASS GIS builds of the stable release branch and master are available from ppa:grass/grass-devel:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntugis/ubuntugis-unstable
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:grass/grass-devel

b) Latest packaged stable version of GRASS GIS is available from ppa:grass/grass-stable:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntugis/ppa
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:grass/grass-stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install grass

Dependencies

Current stable Ubuntu version

First, update the system from the repositories

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Then, install SQLite, SVN and dependencies for compiling PROJ, GEOS, GDAL/OGR, GRASS, GDAL-GRASS-PLUGIN (some additional packages may be required in this case); the following action will also install various dependencies (listed in the command line as The following extra packages will be installed:...):

The following dependencies concern Ubuntu Xenial Xerus (16.04 LTS)

# this is a single command, please copy-paste it entirely into the terminal:
sudo apt-get install \
  build-essential \
  flex make bison gcc libgcc1 g++ cmake ccache \
  python python-dev \
  python-opengl \
  python-wxversion python-wxtools python-wxgtk3.0 \
  python-dateutil libgsl-dev python-numpy \
  wx3.0-headers wx-common libwxgtk3.0-dev \
  libwxbase3.0-dev   \
  libncurses5-dev \
  zlib1g-dev gettext \
  libtiff5-dev libpnglite-dev \
  libcairo2 libcairo2-dev \
  sqlite3 libsqlite3-dev \
  libpq-dev \
  libreadline6 libreadline6-dev libfreetype6-dev \
  libfftw3-3 libfftw3-dev \
  libboost-thread-dev libboost-program-options-dev \
  resolvconf \
  libjasper-dev \
  git \
  libav-tools libavutil-dev ffmpeg2theora \
  libffmpegthumbnailer-dev \
  libavcodec-dev \
  libxmu-dev \
  libavformat-dev libswscale-dev \
  checkinstall \
  libglu1-mesa-dev libxmu-dev \
  ghostscript

The following dependencies concern Ubuntu Trusty Tahr (14.04 LTS)

# this is a single command, please copy-paste it entirely into the terminal:
sudo apt-get install \
  build-essential \
  flex make bison gcc libgcc1 g++ \
  python python-dev \
  python-dateutil libgsl0-dev python-numpy \
  zlib1g-dev gettext \
  libtiff-dev libpnglite-dev \
  sqlite3 libsqlite3-dev \
  libboost-thread-dev libboost-program-options-dev \
  resolvconf \
  git \
  checkinstall \
  cmake ccache \
  python-opengl \
  python-wxversion python-wxtools python-wxgtk2.8 \
  wx2.8-headers wx-common libwxgtk2.8-dev libwxgtk2.8-dbg \
  libwxbase2.8-dev  libwxbase2.8-dbg \
  libncurses5-dev \
  libcairo2 libcairo2-dev \
  libpq-dev \
  libreadline6 libreadline6-dev libfreetype6-dev \
  libfftw3-3 libfftw3-dev \
  libjasper-dev \
  libav-tools libavutil-dev ffmpeg2theora \
  libffmpegthumbnailer-dev \
  libavcodec-dev \
  libxmu-dev \
  libavformat-dev libswscale-dev \
  libglu1-mesa-dev libxmu-dev \
  ghostscript

• See the additional packages bellow and in other sections and install them. Note that some of them are required, namely PROJ, GEOS and GDAL. If you don't have special requirements, it is usually enough just to install PROJ, GEOS and GDAL from repository (rather then compile them manually).

• for mysql support, libmysqlclient-dev is required

sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev

• for netcdf support, netcdf-bin and libnetcdf-dev is required

sudo apt-get install netcdf-bin libnetcdf-dev

• for i.spec.unmix Addon support, install LAPACK and BLAS:

sudo apt-get install libatlas-dev libblas-dev liblapack-dev

• create a directory as a simple user where all source code is going to be stored -- in this example, a directory named src under /usr/local is created

  sudo mkdir /usr/local/src
  

• take over directories ownerships (replace below the terms userid and groupid with a real userid):

  sudo chown userid:groupid /usr/local/src
  

• similarly, grant rwx (read-write-execute) permissions for our userid and groupid onto the src directory:

  sudo chmod ug+rwx /usr/local/src
  

Using pre-compiled dev Packages for PROJ, GEOS and GDAL

PROJ

Install the dev package:

sudo apt-get install libproj-dev proj-data proj-bin

• In the call to ./configure for GRASS, replace --with-proj-share=/usr/local/share/proj/ by --with-proj-share=/usr/share/proj/

GEOS

Install the dev package:

# probably you also need to additionally install "libgeos-c1v5"
sudo apt-get install libgeos-dev

• In the call to ./configure for GRASS, replace --with-geos=/usr/local/bin/geos-config by --with-geos=/usr/bin/geos-config

GDAL

Install the dev package (possibly without support for datumgrid):

sudo apt-get install libgdal-dev

For support of WMS in wxGUI install Python GDAL bindings and GDAL executables:

sudo apt-get install python-gdal gdal-bin

• Install also the required extra packages (note the message: The following extra packages will be installed:)
• Look out for packages to be removed by this operation -- this is most likely caused by incompatible package versions. Fix these problems in advance using commands like the following:

  sudo apt-get install <package>=<required.version>
  

GRASS-GIS

Jump to sub-section GRASS-GIS below

Using pre-compiled dev Packages for PROJ, GEOS and GDAL from GIS.lab PPA

Ivan Mincik has made all required packages available in his PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:imincik/gis
sudo apt-get install libproj-dev libgdal-dev python-gdal libgeos-dev

Now you can either also install GRASS GIS from there or compile it yourself (see Jump to sub-section GRASS-GIS below)

Compile from source

PROJ

• within the directory /usr/local/src (create it if it does not exist) checkout proj from its GitHub repository:

  https://github.com/OSGeo/PROJ/
  

• get proj-datumgrid-1.8.zip or related files from proj' trac and move it under proj/nad

wget http://download.osgeo.org/proj/proj-datumgrid-1.8.zip
mv proj-datumgrid-1.8.zip /usr/local/src/proj/nad
cd /usr/local/src/proj/nad

• decompress it

  unzip proj-datumgrid-1.8.zip
  

• go back to the proj directory

  cd /usr/local/src/proj
  

• if required, clean previous configuration & compilation

  make distclean
  

• simple configure, compile and install

  ./configure  &&  make  &&  sudo make install
  

or

./configure && make -j2  &&  sudo checkinstall

• ensure that /usr/local/lib is added to /etc/ld.so.conf and afterwards run

  sudo ldconfig
  

• finally, go back to the parent directory simply by instructing

  cd ..
  

GEOS

• download geos-3.12.2.tar.bz2 from https://libgeos.org/ using wget

  wget https://download.osgeo.org/geos/geos-3.12.2.tar.bz2
  

• move to the "source-code" directory and decompress

cd /usr/local/src/
bunzip2 geos-3.12.2.tar.bz2
tar xvf  geos-3.12.2.tar

• if required, clean previous configuration & compilation

  make distclean
  

• move to geos directory

  cd geos-3.12.2
  

• simple configure, compile and install

  ./configure  &&  make  &&  sudo make install
  

or

./configure  && make -j2  &&  sudo checkinstall

• do not forget to execute

  sudo ldconfig
  

GDAL

Note, GDAL must be compiled without GRASS support!

• download the current stable version (see https://github.com/OSGeo/gdal/releases for latest version):

wget https://github.com/OSGeo/gdal/releases/download/v3.9.1/gdal-3.9.1.tar.gz

Follow the instructions to compile GDAL: https://gdal.org/development/building_from_source.html

GRASS GIS

Note the differences between different GRASS GIS version (branches) in download and cofiguration. Note also the changes required if you installed some of the dependencies from packages (rather then compiled them yourself).

To fully understand the build process, read the INSTALL file, which is located in GRASS' source code root directory.

Getting GRASS' source code

Select from one of the GRASS GIS versions and download the source code:

https://github.com/OSGeo/grass/releases/

Configure, Compile and Install

Enter the directory with the source code, for example:

cd grass

• GRASS GIS example configuration (which can/should be adjusted according to specific needs):

CFLAGS="-O2 -Wall" LDFLAGS="-s" ./configure \
--with-nls \
--with-cxx \
--with-proj-share=/usr/local/share/proj/ \
--with-geos=/usr/local/bin/geos-config \
--with-wxwidgets \
--with-cairo \
--with-opengl-libs=/usr/include/GL \
--with-freetype=yes --with-freetype-includes="/usr/include/freetype2/" \
--with-postgres=yes --with-postgres-includes="/usr/include/postgresql" \
--with-sqlite=yes \
--with-mysql=yes --with-mysql-includes="/usr/include/mysql" \
--with-odbc=no \
--with-pdal

Note, the above configuration uses the PROJ and GEOS packages compiled from the source. In the case that pre-compiled versions from the repository are required, remove the above corresponding lines to use the "defaults", i.e. (note the backslashe at the end of each line)

--with-proj-share=/usr/share/proj \
--with-geos=/usr/bin/geos-config \

• compile & install

  make -j2  &&  sudo make install  &&  sudo ldconfig
  

or

make -j2  &&  sudo checkinstall  &&  sudo ldconfig

For subsequent updates execute (not need for the first time):

svn up
make -j2 && sudo make install  &&  sudo ldconfig

Sometimes, it is required to clean previous configuration and compilation:

make distclean
svn up
./configure ... # (use the configure command above)
make -j2 && sudo make install  &&  sudo ldconfig

GDAL-GRASS-Plugin

See: https://github.com/OSGeo/gdal-grass

• get the plugin from GitHub: "gdal-grass-X.Y.Z.tar.gz" using wget

# update version number accordingly!
wget https://github.com/OSGeo/gdal-grass/archive/refs/tags/1.0.2.tar.gz -O gdal-grass-1.0.2.tar.gz
tar xvzf gdal-grass-1.0.2.tar.gz
cd gdal-grass-1.0.2

• create /etc/ld.so.conf.d/grass.conf or add in /etc/ld.so.conf the GRASS library path:

# GRASS GIS stable library path (adapt as needed)
/usr/local/src/releasebranch_8_4/lib

# GRASS GIS development version library path (adapt as needed)
/usr/local/src/grass_master/lib

• optionally, clean previous configurations/compilations

   make distclean
  

• configure -- point to GRASS installation/binaries

 ./configure \
 --prefix=/usr/local \
 --with-gdal=/usr/local/bin/gdal-config \
 --with-grass=/usr/local/grass/ \
 --with-autoload="/usr/local/lib64/gdalplugins/" \
 --with-ld-shared="g++ -shared"

• compile & install using checkinstall

   make -j2  &&  sudo checkinstall
  

Post compilation/installation control

• For a recommended quick-check read the Troubleshooting section at Compile_and_install_GDAL-GRASS_plugin

• in case of errors in future compilation attempts, remember to remove program binaries and files created with the "configuration" from previous compilations with

make distclean

• another common mistake is compiling a module against some GRASS version and then try to run it through another GRASS version. The solution is to recompile the affected module or, in case there are multiple GRASS installations, set up properly LD_LIBRARY_PATH paths.

Removal of GRASS

To get rid of a GRASS binaries installation, delete (update version numbers accordingly)

• /usr/local/grass (directory, binaries location)
• /usr/local/bin/grass (file)
• /home/username/.grassrc8 (file)

If wanted, delete also the complete source code:

• /usr/local/src/grass_release (directory, source code location)

To remove grass (or any other package) which was installed by checkinstall, use dpkg, e.g.

sudo dpkg -r grass # package name defined at installation is important

See also

• Docker: https://grass.osgeo.org/download/docker/
• Ubuntu Packaging
• GRASS in Debian

Archived Notes

Notes that concern the configuration and compilation of GRASS GIS and its dependencies for older versions of Ubuntu-Linux.