Compile and Install

How to do compilation and installation of GRASS 6?

Here we explain the procedure to compile GRASS from CVS, but it also applies to official GRASS 6 releases. For installation of for binary packages, see instead Installation Guide.

Prerequisites

GRASS needs at least two extra libraries:

• PROJ4 for management of projections
• GDAL/OGR for reading and writing various GIS data formats (interoperability)

You have to install these two libraries first.

Compilation and installation procedure

• checkout the grass6 module from cvs (read http://grass.itc.it/faq/cvs_howto.html grass CVS howto instructions)
• It is wise that compilation processes are carried out as a normal user: If you want to get the source code in a place where you do not have write permissions (e.g. in /usr/local/src/cvs) just follow this:

     cd /usr/local/src/cvs 
     su -c 'mkdir grass6'
     su -c 'chown yourlogin:yourgroup grass6'

• do a checkout (co) of the repository

     cvs -z3 co grass6

• in the grass6 directory, you will find the precious INSTALL file, open it with your favourite pager/editor and read it carefully!
• run configure with parameters to adapt the compile process to your own system. To see what options can be passed to it, run configure --help. The minimum set of configure parameters is (refers to GRASS 6 from CVS, not to 6.x release):

     ./configure

It may (!) look like this:

     ./configure \
         --with-cxx \
         --with-sqlite \
         --with-postgres-libs=/usr/include/pgsql/libpq --with-postgres-includes=/usr/include/pgsql \
         --with-freetype --with-freetype-includes=/usr/include/freetype2 \
         --with-motif --with-glw

Please note that the paths mentioned may widely vary due to the distribution used

• Let's compile it (takes a little while...)!

     make

• Once the installation process is finished, you're ready to install GRASS system wide.

     su -c 'make install'

• enjoy GRASS:

     grass61

What else?

If you want to use QGIS, then also compile the GRASS-GDAL/OGR plugin:

• Compile and install GRASS and QGIS with GDAL/OGR Plugin (enables QGIS to read GRASS data directly)