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 libpdal-plugin-python -y
# Python3 precedence over Python2 (which is end-of-life since 2019)
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-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 \
subversion libzstd-dev \
checkinstall \
libglu1-mesa-dev libxmu-dev \
ghostscript wget -y
For NVIZ on Ubuntu 22.04:
sudo apt-get install \
ffmpeg libavutil-dev ffmpeg2theora \
libffmpegthumbnailer-dev \
libavcodec-dev \
libxmu-dev \
libavformat-dev libswscale-dev
Update wxpython:
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 ofsudo 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
ormake -j3
or evenmake -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 liblas-c-dev \
resolvconf \
libjasper-dev \
subversion \
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 liblas-c-dev \
resolvconf \
subversion \
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
andlibnetcdf-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 createdsudo 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 thesrc
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) checkoutproj
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
directorycd /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 runsudo 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
Archived Notes
Notes that concern the configuration and compilation of GRASS GIS and its dependencies for older versions of Ubuntu-Linux.