Error incompatible library version for module

Q: Running GRASS, I get this error message:

  "ERROR: Incompatible library version for module. You need to rebuild GRASS
          or untangle multiple installations"

What's that? What should I do?

A: Likely you have a self-compiled GRASS version (which is fine). So? When doing update from SVN which contains a change in the core GIS library, and a subsequent recompilation without having run "make distclean" before, this error is issued to avoid incompatibility problems.

Solution

Prepare and recompile your source code copy in this way:

 make distclean
 svn up
 ./configure ...
 make
 make install

Note: If you use the GDAL-GRASS plugin then also recompile and reinstall it - "just to be sure".

Notes

• the "make install" stop requires "sudo" under Ubuntu.
• a reminder that the last step ("sudo make install") can be avoided completely in single-user complilations since GRASS can be launched directly from within the "/path/to/src/grass64_release/bin.x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/" directory. You can simply create the following link:

 /usr/local/bin/grass64 -> /path/to/src/grass64_release/bin.x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/grass64

• Also, on Ubuntu, in case one wants to install the compiled binaries, the program "checkinstall" is a good option instead of "make install". It creates a .deb package and installs it which can be easily uninstalled of course in case of future updates.